


Unmasked

by navigatio



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, Found Family, Hurt Mando, Protective Mando, Sorry Mando, no graphic descriptions, the helmet comes off
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 75,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24122518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navigatio/pseuds/navigatio
Summary: Things are looking up for Cara Dune, new inductee into the Bounty Hunter Guild. She’s got a spiffy new job thanks to Greef Karga, credits in her pocket, even a new ship—So when she gets a possible distress call from Mando, she has to make a decision: go rescue him, or stay in pursuit of her bounty—oh, who is she kidding, of course she’s going to rescue Mando and the kid, dammit.Content Warning for Chapter 9. No graphic descriptions, but still.This story was drafted/started in the interim between seasons 1 and 2, does not include anything from season 2.
Relationships: Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune/The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 266
Kudos: 575





	1. Inconvenient rescue mission

Chapter 1: Inconvenient rescue mission

Things are looking up for Cara Dune, new inductee into the Bounty Hunter Guild. She’s got a spiffy new job thanks to Greef Karga, credits in her pocket, even a new ship—well, it’s not really new. It’s got a few dents in the hull, the upholstery in the pilot’s seat is worn through, and the ceiling in the cockpit is so low she bangs her head every time she stands up, but it’s got her name on the title. She christened it Princess Of Alderaan as a joke, but the name ended up sticking, and now it’s stenciled on the hull in letters that are taller than she is. Yeah, everything’s great. She hasn’t heard from Mando in a while, but that’s normal. He’s not big on coummunication anyway. So when her comm squawks in the middle of her sleep cycle, she’s surprised.

She pulls her blanket around her shoulders and stumbles up the three steps to the cockpit. Her bleary eyes take a second to make out the sender. Mando?

Her hand hits the switch to accept the commlink before she even thinks about what her hair looks like. One hand goes up unconsciously to try tofluff it up on the side she was sleeping on, but it turns out she needn’t have bothered, cuz the message is audio only—the sound of the kid squealing, and then half of Mando swearing “Shab!” before it’s cut off.

“Mando?” she says, tapping the comm. “Hey, Mando, you there?”

There’s no response. Huh. She leans back in the squeaky pilot seat and rubs her eyes. That sounded like a happy squeal from the kid, right? If so, he was probably just messing with the controls again, right? And Mando caught him, hence the swear. Yeah, that’s probably it. He’s not answering now because he’s dealing with the naughty little womp rat. So why is she sitting here worrying in the middle of her sleep cycle? She’ll just go back to bed and try him again in the morning.

It’s a good plan, but one she doesn’t end up following through on. She has every intention of going to bed, but first she leans back in the chair and closes her eyes for just a minute, and when she opens them again, it’s three hours later. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she toggles the switch to hail Mando again. Again he doesn’t answer, which is weird. Even if he was dealing with the kid three hours ago, he should be answering now.

She glances over at the bounty chip sitting on the side panel. It’s a good one—fairly low risk, high payout—and Karga promised he’d pay in New Republic credits, not Empirical. Scowling, she toggles the switch to hail Mando again. Still no response. Fark it! She hopes the bounty will still be there tomorrow because she’s gonna have to go check out if kid is ok. . . . and Mando too, she supposes.

She sets the computer to the task of tracking the source of the comm signal while she prepares for the change in course. When the computer dings at her, she grunts in annoyance. Halfway across the farking quadrant. It’ll take at least a day to get to the entrance to the nearest hyperspace lane, then another day on the other end. Her bounty will be long gone by the time she gets there and back. Mando’s failure to answer his comm better be because he’s unconscious or dead somewhere, or she’s gonna kill him herself for wasting so much of her time. Whatever. Money is overrated. Grumbling under her breath, she lays in the course..

Over the next two days she hails Mando over and over, hoping this time he’ll answer and she can give up this wild goose chase, but he never responds. By the time she drops out of hyperspeed, her annoyance is gone and she’s properly worried. If Mando were alive and able, he certainly would have responded to her repeated messages by now. There has to be something wrong.

Once she’s in the right system, it doesn’t take long to pick up his drive signature, heading toward a little backwater moon. It’s near nothing and nobody, so why would he go there? But the trail definitely leads there, and there’s no trail leading back out, so he must’ve landed on the moon. Doesn’t make any sense, and yet he still doesn’t answer the farking comm.

The moon is heavily forested. Halfway through the first sub-atmospheric orbit, she spots the trail of broken, blackened trees through the green. Her heart starts pounding. Goddammit, Mando. Don’t be dead down there somewhere. Please don’t be dead. Don’t leave that kid an orphan again. Please please please.

At the end of the trail, she finds the Razor Crest, laying at an angle on its belly on the jungle floor, with one of its nacelles torn off leaving a gaping wound in the side. Looks bad, but survivable. Maybe, as long as the hull breach happened when they were in the atmosphere instead of the void of space. The cabin is still intact, so maybe. If anyone could pull it off, Mando could, right? His ship is held together by rubber bands and wishful thinking most of the time, and he manages to make it work.

As she sets down next to the wreckage, she sees scarring along the side, a trio of parallel dark lines etched deep into the outer hull. Had to have come from laser cannons, she’d recognize that damage anywhere. There are no other ships in the area, so maybe they outran whoever was shooting at them, and managed to land here. She considers that best-case scenario. Worst case is their pursuers followed them down and finished them off, then left again. Privately she considers that more likely, but decides not to think about it yet.

Her approach was noisy enough that if there’s anyone alive on the Crest, they must know she’s there, so she doesn’t try to be stealthy in walking up to the ship. “Mando?” she calls, running her fingers over a jagged crack in the outer hull radiating out from a singed impact crater. PDC round—he’s lucky the inner hull didn’t breach when that hit, or he and the kid would’ve been space debris.

There’s no answer. Circling the ship, she finds the door gaping open, with the bent gangplank hanging crookedly on its hinges. “Hey, Mando!” she calls again, toward the open doorway which is about her shoulder height. Still no response, so she clambers up over the broken door and stands in the opening. There’s not much light, but from what she can make out, it’s empty. Not just empty of people, although that’s true—empty of everything. Not as bad as Jawas, because the furniture and wiring appear intact, but everything that wasn’t nailed down is gone. She turns on her flashlight and shines it around. Mando’s weapon’s locker stands open and empty. Food cupboard bare. Emergency gear backpack gone. Even the bedding is missing from the sleeping compartments. She doesn’t want to admit it, but she’s pretty sure Mando wouldn’t strip his own ship, so that tilts the calculation toward the worst-case scenario. So where are Mando and the kid?

She takes a step in the ship and her foot lands in something squishy and sticky. When she points the flashlight at it, she finds a reddish-brown puddle. Yeah, that’s congealed blood, quite a lot actually. Her mind runs through the calculation automatically, taking into account Mando’s approximate weight and how much blood he’d have to lose before he bled out, and comparing it to the size of the pool on the floor. Probably not enough to kill him. Probably. She swings the flashlight along the floor toward the doorway. Now that she’s looking for it, she can spot the smeared trail of droplets leading out the door. So he was injured, and he went out of the ship. Alone? The drops of blood lead to the edge of the doorway, so she jumps down to the ground, where she finds a bootprint in the mud—not hers, and not Mando’s. The tread isn’t imperial issue either as far as she knows. When she kneels down to get a closer look, she finds Mando’s bootprint too, along with more drops of blood. The print is smeared, like he was dragging his leg—or someone was dragging him. No footprints from the kid, but that’s not surprising. It’s more likely someone would’ve been carrying him.

There’s a trail of overlapping footprints leading deeper into the woods, so she follows the path with her flashlight alternating between the ground and the trees, where she catches a glint of something white amongst the green: a derelict building, she realizes when she gets closer, still standing but barely, paint peeling off, door hanging from its hinges. As soon as she sees it, she draws her blaster reflexively, faster than thought. It’s just suddenly in her hand and she’s standing outside the doorframe, back to the wall. She holds her breath, listening, but hears nothing. Peeks around the doorway. Empty. Next breath she’s inside, blaster and flashlight first.

She repeats the process at the next doorframe. Just inside the doorway, she finds the prone body of a large man, too big to be Mando. Red skin, horns, ugly son of a bitch. She only looks long enough to determine two things: he’s dead (no wounds she can see, although his face is spattered with dried blood), and she doesn’t know him. Then she swings the flashlight up and pulls up short. In the far corner of the room are two supporting beams, about five feet apart, and chained up between them is another man. He’s slumped down, knees bent, hanging from his bruised arms. His head is bent forward and dark shaggy hair obscures her view of his face. He’s got on a dirty, ripped undershirt, and grey trousers, the left leg of which is stained dark maroonish brown from dried blood.

A quick glance in the other corners of the room shows her he’s alone. She takes a cautious step forward. The man doesn’t move. Is he dead? She keeps her blaster trained on him just in case.

“Hey,” she says. The man’s head jerks up, dark eyes squinting against the harsh glare of flashlight beam. She doesn’t recognize his face, but maybe that’s because it’s a filthy, bruised-up mess: black eye, swollen cheekbone, crust of dried blood under his nose, split lip. As soon as he sees her, his eyes slide shut and his shoulders sag in relief.

“Cara,” he rasps, “You got my message.”

Oh shit, she knows that voice, even though he sounds like he’s been chewing gravel. “Mando?” she says cautiously, lowering the blaster so it’s not pointed at his head. The flashlight she keeps trained on his face. Hard to tell exactly what he looks like through the dirt and bruises. The only thing she can say for certain is he’s human, but she was already pretty sure of that.

His eyes open and fix on her for a second, then slide away again. “Yeah.”

“What the hell, Mando. . .” she says, toggling the safety on her blaster and jamming it into the holster strapped to her leg. He just shakes his head mutely. He’s trying to stand up straight, but his legs are trembling from the effort. “Hang on, I’ll take the cuffs off,” she says, pulling out her multitool from her belt. She fumbles with the attachments until she finds one that she can use to pry open the lock. While she’s working, she glances around the corners of the room again, as if the kid might be hiding there, even though she already knows he must be long gone. She’s also looking for his armor, but of course they would’ve taken that too, wouldn’t they? That shit’s expensive.

A twist of the tip of the tool in the lock, and the first cuff clicks open. His arm drops like a stone. He makes a sort of strangled noise of pain, and his knee buckles. “Hang on there, buddy,” she says, wrapping her arm around him and grabbing hold of his belt with her free hand. His muscles jerk and bunch up at the touch.

“You’re ok. Let me get the other cuff.” Still holding him up, she reaches around him and digs the tool into the other cuff until it too falls open. As soon as he’s free, he stumbles and would’ve fallen if it weren’t for her arm holding him up. She can feel his whole body quivering, but still he pushes himself to his feet and shrugs off her grasp.

“I can stand,” he says, even though his legs are making a liar of him. She’s heard that line before, and it wasn’t true then either. He pushes her hand away, so she lets go, but keeps her arms out to catch him in case his knees give out again.

“Where’s the kid?” she says.

“They took him.”

“Who took him?”

“They did,” he replies simply. He starts limping toward the door, one hand pressed against the blood stain on his pant leg. Cara tucks her multitool into her belt and folds her arms, waiting for him to fall. Then she’s gonna put her knee on his chest and hold him down until he gives her more information.

He keeps moving, albeit slowly. She decides not to wait for him to fall. He can give more information while he’s hobbling away. “Where are you going?”

“To get my kid,” he says. He’s barefoot, can barely walk, there are stripes of dried blood sticking what’s left of his undershirt to his back, and his ship is unsalvageable. Where exactly does he think he’s going anyway?

“How? You don’t even have shoes.”

“I can get more.” He steps over the dead man and keeps going.

“Your ship is broken.”

“I assume you have one.”

“Well, yeah—“

“Ok.” He’s finally at the door, where he pauses and turns his head toward her. “Coming?”

Shit. Yeah, so much for her bounty. Looks like she’s going on a rescue mission. Where? She has no idea, and she’s pretty sure he doesn’t either. “Yeah, of course I’m coming.”


	2. Baby Porg Eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, leaving Kudos, and especially commenting! I'm glad this story has been well-received. I was worried how readers might react when I unceremoniously ripped Mando's helmet off, but it looks like I got away with it, at least so far. Thanks for letting me play in the sandbox for a while. I'll put it all back when I'm done.

Chapter 2: Baby Porg Eyes

* * *

She catches up to him about four steps later, as he makes his slow, determined way to the front door. Beads of sweat are dripping down the side of his face, but he never makes a sound. “You know, we’d go faster if you’d let me help you,” she suggests, expecting him to disagree, but he nods, once. His face is expressionless but his jaw muscle is jumping from grinding his teeth.

“Ok. Thank you.” 

She reaches for his right wrist, then stops herself because the skin is raw and bloody where the cuff dug into it. So instead she grabs his forearm, only to feel him flinch again. “Oh, sorry, you said—“

“Yes, it’s fine.” He lifts his arm up and slings it around her neck. After a second, she wraps her other arm around his waist and grabs his belt again. She plans to move fast, but now that she’s touching him, she can feel all of his muscles quivering. Even though he’s not complaining, she revises her speed downward. 

Halfway there, she glances at his face, which is ghostly pale under the dirt, blood, and bruises. “You ok?”

“Yeah,” he lies. Clearly he’s not ok, but he’s not stopping either, so neither does she. When they get to the end of the muddy path, she starts to head toward her ship, but he tugs her toward the Crest.

“It’s broken, remember?”

“I gotta get my stuff.”

“It’s all gone. They looted it.”

He stops short and stares at nothing for a second, like he’s got a short circuit. 

“Mando?”

He shakes his head and takes a step in the direction of the Crest anyway. “I have stuff hidden.”

“Oookay.”

Cara’s not sure how he’s going to get in the door of the ship with his injured leg, but he sure is determined to try. He catches the edge of the gangplank, throws his uninjured leg over and tries to hauls himself up inside, but he can’t quite make it. He drops back down, landing awkwardly on his bum leg. Damn, that must hurt, but he just grunts and starts trying again. Again he has to drop back down. His undershirt is soaked with sweat now, dampening the dried blood and dirt smeared over fabric and skin. Finally he stops and stands staring up at the opening. His head doesn’t move, but his eyes cut to her, then back to the doorway. It’s pretty obvious what he wants, even though he doesn’t ask. 

Cara jumps up onto the broken gangplank and holds out her hand to help him up. He silently contemplates her hand, while she silently contemplates him. His jaw is fixed, face completely still, but his eyes are giving up the game. Sad, anxious, like a baby porg. Come on, buddy. It’s not a snake. 

“I won’t bite you,” she assures him wryly. She’s hoping for some sort of response, but nope. His expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t even make eye contact, but he does grab her hand and let her haul him up, so that’s good. 

“Thank you,” he says flatly, already looking past her into the ship. He doesn’t even look around at the mess, just goes to an apparently blank wall, walks his fingers down an apparently random spot, and a panel springs open. He reaches in and pulls out a duffel bag. The contents clank as he hefts the strap over his shoulder.

“Ok, let’s go.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, that’s it.” He edges past her and clambers stiffly down the gangplank. She jumps down and holds out her hand to help him, but he half-hops, half-falls down on his own, lands awkwardly, then straightens up and starts limping toward her ship. 

“You ok?” she asks again.

“Yes.”

No, he’s so obviously not, but she’s not going to fight him on it again. If he wants to hurt himself more by refusing her help, what is she supposed to do?

When they get to her ship, he drops his duffel in the middle of the cabin and hauls himself up the ladder to the cockpit. She glares at the duffel as she hits the controls to close the hatch. On her way past, she kicks his duffel over into a corner next to the spare sleeping compartment (currently full of all the junk she doesn’t have storage space for—gonna have to fix that). The bag is heavier than she expects, and it makes a clanking sound when it hits the wall. She’ll clear out his bed-in-the-wall later; now they have to figure out where to find his kid. She climbs the ladder behind him. He flinches as she squeezes around him.

“Sorry,” she says, dropping into the pilot seat. She’s not sure what she’s sorry for exactly, but it’s obvious that her touching him (or in this case, almost touching him) makes him uncomfortable.

“Ok, where are we going?” she asks, hitting the switch to turn on the display. He eases himself down into the navigator seat and examines the star chart. His body is turned so she can see him in profile. He has a slightly crooked nose, like it’s been broken a few times. Doesn’t that helmet protect his nose? Almost as if he can sense what she’s thinking, he ducks his head and turns his shoulder so it blocks her view of his face.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, how are we supposed to find them?”

“I know their drive signature. I used to run with them. Before I—before the kid.” He leans in and starts entering data with one hand, while his other hand presses against his injured leg. 

“Did you know the dead guy?”

“Not really.” 

“We could call Karga, enlist some help.”

“No. I’m not going to risk the kid getting caught in the crossfire.” Fresh blood oozes through his fingers.

“You’re bleeding again.”

“It’s not important,” he says, without taking his eyes off the control panel.

“It is if it gets infected.”

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps studying the display intently. Now he’s turned away from her just enough that she can only see the curve of one cheek and the back of his head. Can’t tell how much of the curl in his hair is actual curl, and how much is tangles and dried sweat. 

Her console beeps, making her jump. She tears her gaze away from his hair and glances down. There’s a heading laid in. Not a course, exactly, but at least a direction to get them started. It’s enough for now. While she warms up the engines, she asks, “Are you hungry? Or thirsty?” 

he pushes himself to his feet. “I can wait. I need to clean up. Do you have any Bacta?”

“Yeah, it’s in the red emergency kit in the head. Bandages too. Need any help?”

“No, I can do it. Thank you.”

Cara waits until they have left the atmosphere and she hears the shower running before she engages the autopilot and goes down to the “galley”, as she calls it—a fold-out table in one corner of the cabin, a couple of shelves, and a tiny cooker that runs off of excess heat vented from the engines. She rarely uses the cooker because most of her food is shelf-stable and ready to eat. She doesn’t mind a home-cooked meal, as long as she doesn’t have to be the one doing the cooking.

She fills a canteen with water, empties an electrolyte packet in, and shakes it up while she snags a handful of protein bars from a shelf. He’s gotta be dehydrated. How many days was he chained up like that? At least long enough for the blood to dry. It took her almost three days to get there after she got the distress call. Was he there that whole time? How much of a head start did they get with the kid?

Cara hears a noise coming from the head, a thump, and then an aborted cry of pain. She takes a step closer to the closed door. “Mando? You ok in there?”

There is a pause before he responds, and when he finally speaks, his voice is tight. “I’m fine.”

“Uh-huh.” You keep telling yourself that, buddy.

She opens both folding chairs and sits down in one of them. She hopes he’s making liberal use of the Bacta on that wound on his leg. As much as she’d hate to have to try to clean it out if it gets infected, she bets he’d hate it even more. 

She’s finished with her first protein bar and is halfway through the second when the door to the head opens. The first thing she notices is that he’s still barefoot. Scanning up, she sees he’s got on brown pants in a soft fabric, and a loose dark blue t-shirt. Mando in his pajamas. Aww. . . She’s about to make a snide comment, but then she sees his serious expression and her comment dies before it reaches her lips. His face is clean, but that somehow makes the bruises look worse in contrast with his pale skin. Hair is clean and wet, but still tangled. Possibly he dragged his fingers through it, certainly not a comb. His mouth and eyebrows are hard, straight lines, but his eyes still haven’t lost that sad, anxious baby porg look. Maybe that’s just how his eyes always look, under the helmet so no one knows. 

His gaze meets hers briefly, and he quickly looks down. “Will you help me with my back?” he says, holding out the canister of Bacta.

“Sure.” She points to the other chair and he straddles it, facing away. He lifts up the hem of the shirt and gathers it up to his shoulderblades, so the lower half of his back is exposed. Along with multiple bruises in a rainbow of colors, three ugly red gashes criss-cross his back at angles. Not deep enough to be knife wounds. Whip, maybe? 

As the first spritz of Bacta hits the gash, he flinches away. “Oh, sorry, should’ve warned you.”

“It’s just cold. I’m fine. Keep going.”

She sprays him again, and this time he holds still, although she can still see the muscles twitching with the effort. After she has soaked the wounds with what she thinks is probably enough, she scans upward and spots a few more smaller scratches peeking out from under the hem of the shirt. She gently lifts the shirt up a little higher and sprays them too, then cocks her head and examines them. Those look like. . .

“Mando, are these fingernail scratches?”

There is a pause of several seconds before he responds. She’s about to ask him again, when he says, “No. Are you done?”

“Almost.” She sprays the not-fingernail scratches, then looks around on his back for any other open wounds. Down near the waistband of his pants, she finds several small cuts, laid out in what looks like an intentional pattern. Some sort of symbol, with several diagonal and horizontal lines. The cuts are not too deep, but they are clean. Someone did this on purpose.

As she leans in to inspect it, Mando drops his shirt, cutting off her view. “That’s good enough. Thank you.”

“Oh. Ok.” She’s pretty sure that’s gonna scar without treatment, but she’s not going to push it. She’s got other questions she wants to push him on. “Did you bandage that leg?”

“I know how to dress a wound.”

“What happened to your leg? How did they shoot you through your armor?”

Still sitting facing away, he says to the back wall, “I wasn’t wearing it when—I wasn’t wearing it. And they didn’t shoot me. It was—“

Cara leans around a little, trying to see his face, but she can’t catch his eye. “Was what?”

He rubs at his jaw. “A piece of metal got knocked loose when we took that PDC round. Lucky it hit me and not the kid.”

“Yeah. Lucky.” Cara puts the Bacta down on the table and holds out the canteen. “I got you something to drink.”

He turns around enough to take the canteen and just holds it for a second. His hand is trembling, she can hear the water sloshing in the bottle. He sets the bottle on the table, makes a fist and massages his hand a few times, then tries again. Still trembling. He’s staring at the bottle like he thinks he can make it be still with the power of his mind, like the kid can. It’s not working. His expression doesn’t change, but his gaze cuts to her briefly. When he catches her looking, his eyes flick away, so she looks away too, vaguely irritated. Doesn’t he know it’s normal for people to look at each other? Well, no, he apparently doesn’t, at least as far as it applies to himself. He’s been wearing a mask since he was a kid. Nobody ever saw his face. Well, the mask is gone, so now what does he expect her to do, keep her eyes averted like a peasant girl? 

With a hand that is still trembling, he quickly upends the canteen and takes a swig, spilling water down his chin. Setting the bottle down on the table with a clunk, he swipes at his mouth and picks up the protein bar. In the same motion, he turns his body away a little more so she can’t see his face. It’s painfully obvious that he’s trying to make it look unintentional. He’s hiding, and he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s hiding.

Cara folds her arms and contemplates his back. He’s holding himself very straight and still, his breathing carefully controlled and measured, but he hasn’t opened the protein bar. “Mando,” she says carefully, “are you ok?”

His breathing goes ragged, but the next breath smooths out again. Careful. Controlled. When he speaks, his intonation is carefully controlled too, although his voice is still hoarse. “Don’t worry about me. We just need to find the kid.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“They escaped.”

Huh? He’s lost her. “Escaped?”

“I set them up to get captured by the New Republic, but they escaped. They were after the kid. I just got in their way. I have to get him back before she hurts him.”

Cara raises her eyebrows. “She?”

“I used to run with them. Before I got the kid. Not anymore.”

Cara waits, hoping he’ll offer more information, but he just takes another shaky swig of water and pushes himself to his feet. He’s got the protein bar clutched in his hand, but he hasn’t opened it yet.

“Ok, so. . .what’s the plan?”

“I know where some of their hideouts are. I’m going to try to keep following their drive signature. Maybe I can figure out which one they’re headed to.” Then he pulls himself up the ladder to the cockpit, pointedly leaving her behind, which is fine. There’s not much for a pilot to do right now anyway; she’d only be in the way. So she sits back and “enjoys” her “lunch”. After a minute, she hears the sound of Mando opening the wrapper to his protein bar. Of course—he wants to eat alone. God forbid she sees him do normal human shit like eat, or wear pajamas, or have feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to see Pedro Pascal's baby porg eyes, check out Narcos. You'll also learn some very versatile Spanish phrases =:-O
> 
> Or, if you'd prefer not to watch drug dealers blow each others' heads off, take a look at the picture attached to this article. https://decider.com/2017/09/19/narcos-needs-pedro-pascal/


	3. Fluffy bedhead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if this story got bumped up to the top of the feed when I posted chapter 2, so you might want to make sure you read that one before Chapter 3.

* * *

Cara takes her time cleaning up, pulls everything out of the spare sleeping compartment and dumps it on the floor, then she starts cramming stuff into various cupboards. How did she end up with so much stuff anyway? She’s always packed light, ready to move at a moment’s notice. She thought that was part of her personality, no external attachments. But then the second she got her own ship and a steady job, she suddenly had to have all the shit she never had any use for before. It’s a psychological problem, she knows. Actual physical baggage to match her emotional baggage.

While digging in a cupboard below the galley, she finds a pillow and tosses it at the now-empty compartment. She’s probably got extra sheets and blankets around here somewhere, but she has no idea which cabinet they’re stashed in.

Finally she decides that’s good enough. He’s gotta be finished eating by now, right? She climbs the ladder to the cockpit, a greeting on her lips, and discovers him with his head resting on his arms on the control panel, asleep. Oh. That could not be comfortable.

She can’t see his face in this position, but now that his hair is dry, it’s gone sort of fluffy, with soft waves poking out over his ears. There’s a curl at the base of his neck. It’s sweet, until she also notices the bruises below the curl, like he had been grabbed by the neck by a very large hand. Maybe their friend the ugly red guy with the horns.

“Hey Mando,” she says quietly, trying not to startle him, which does not work. He jerks awake and spins around, hand moving automatically to his hip, reaching for his blaster. Fortunately it’s not there, because he doesn’t seem like he’s really awake enough to realize she’s a friend. “Whoa there buddy,” she says, backing away with her hands out.

“Oh.” He blinks and looks around the cockpit blearily, like he’s trying to work out where he is. “Sorry.”

“Did you find the trail?”

“No, not yet,” he says, rubbing at his eyes with his fists, like a kid. A kid in his jammies with fluffy bedhead. She’s showing remarkable restraint by not giving him shit about it. “Space is—space is big.”

She snorts. “Yes it is. Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

“I have to track them.”

“The computer can run the search pattern fine without you. It’s better at pattern-matching than we are anyway. It’ll wake us if it finds anything. You need sleep.” _And so do I_ , she thinks.

He looks back at the navigation panel uncertainly. More anxious baby porg eyes. He’s gonna have to stop doing that. It makes her want to pat him on the head, and she doesn’t think he’d take kindly to that.

With a sigh, she picks up a datapad and syncs it to the navigation panel. “There, see? Now you can take it to bed with you,” she says, holding it out to him. He takes the pad and frowns at it, but still doesn’t move. “Come on, I have an extra bed—well, it’s more of a body shelf. Not the comfiest or roomiest, but it’ll do. Come on, I’ll show you. You’ll think better after you get some sleep.”

After several seconds of her smiling at him encouragingly, he finally says, “Yeah, ok.” He gets up stiffly, hand pressed to his leg, and follows her down the ladder to the cabin.

She hits the controls to open the compartment and discovers, oh right, the bed’s not made up. “Here you go. Let me find the sheets. Just a second.” The sheets are probably stashed away in the bottom of some cupboard, if she even has any. It’s not like she was planning on having company, anyway. She opens the nearest cupboard and starts rummaging through the shelves until she finally comes up with a blanket. “Found a blanket,” she says, holding it up like a prize. There’s no response. When she pulls her head out of the cupboard and turns around, she finds that he’s asleep already, curled up on his side on the thin mattress, arm wrapped around the end of the pillow.

Now that he’s still and facing toward her, she finally gets a chance to take a closer look at his face without him making him uncomfortable. Even in sleep his eyes still look troubled, eyebrows pulled together with an upright line between them. Bridge of his nose wrinkled. Now that the blood is gone from his upper lip, she can see he has a sparse mustache. Sweet mouth, which makes him look younger than he probably really is. Strong jaw dotted with stubble.

His face twists a little in his sleep, and suddenly she feels guilty for looking when he obviously didn’t want her to. After one last glance, she tosses the blanket over him, spreading it out so his bare feet are covered, and hits the control to close the compartment.

After she checks the sensor one last time and finds nothing, she decides there’s really not much else she can do right now. The computer will let her know if it finds anything, so she might as well sleep too while she has a chance. As she’s brushing her teeth, she realizes she didn’t leave a toothbrush out for Mando. Yeah, she’ll have to look for a spare one in the morning cuz she has no idea where it might be.

She’s just reached the deepest cycle of sleep when she hears a noise that brings her instantly alert. She can’t place the sound. It’s nothing she’s used to hearing from her ship. Was it the computer alerting her that it finished its search pattern? She lays very still and waits for it to happen again.

After a moment, her patience is rewarded. This time she recognizes it as shouting. It’s Mando yelling something—she recognizes the word “no” but the rest is pretty incoherent. Must be talking in his sleep. She slides open the hatch to her compartment, wraps her blanket around herself and pads across the cabin to Mando’s compartment on the opposite wall. His shouts have died down to a broken whisper, barely audible through the door. “Don’t. . . Please. . .”

Cara chews her lip. Clearly he’s in distress. It would be better to wake him up, right? She is raising her hand to knock on the hatch when he gives one more cry of “NO—!” that breaks off, then there’s silence. Cara stands with her hand up, waiting, and after a short pause, she can hear him breathing, hard but steady. He’s definitely awake, and if he’s awake, the nightmare is over and he doesn’t need her to wake him up, right? Right. Back to bed. Try to go back to sleep. Try not to think about what he was begging them to stop doing to him. Try not to see the symbol carved into his back. Try not to picture his stupid baby porg eyes and the way he squirms away from her gaze. Yeah, might as well tell herself not to picture purple tauntons. They keep dancing on the insides of her eyelids all the same.

She wakes up grouchy, with a headache starting above her left eye, and a crick in her neck. Mando’s sleeping compartment is open. The pillow and blanket are there, but he is gone. When she sits still and listens, she can hear him up in the cockpit, grumbling under his breath. She tries to make out the words, but finally decides it’s not in a language she recognizes. Better go check on him before he does something stupid.

On her way past the galley, she grabs a couple of protein bars, along with a canteen of water and electrolytes for him and a mug of brown water pretending to be coffee for herself. She pours in milk and sweetener until it’s palatable, then tucks the canteen under her arm, pockets the bars, and pulls herself up the ladder to the cockpit. He’s already hunched over the navigation panel, feet still bare and hair messier than when he went to bed.

“Good morning, Mando,” she greets him.

“Morning,” he mumbles, but doesn’t look up.

“I brought you breakfast,” she says brightly. “Yummy. . .” she pauses to read the wrapper “. . . Jogan fruit flavor.” Her least favorite kind, which is why she is offering it to him. He doesn’t even move when she thunks the bottle and bar down next to him.

“I’m not hungry,” he says to the navigation panel. Screw that.

“How could you not be hungry? You’ve barely eaten anything.”

“If I’m hungry, I’ll eat.”

“How about a drink then? I brought you water.” She holds it over his shoulder where he can’t help but notice it. His hand takes it without turning his head, but he doesn’t drink.

“It’s not osmosis, you know, Mando” she says, settling into the pilot’s seat, “You actually have to drink it.”

There is a bit too long of a pause before he answers. She leans over enough to see that his even though his head is still facing the navigation panel, his eyes are cut toward the water bottle, mouth slightly open, like he’s got a glitch again. The thought crosses her mind that she could probably grab the bottle and pour the water down his throat. Of course, she won’t do it, but it’s fun to imagine.

“Whatever, suit yourself,” she says with a sigh, sitting back in her seat. The glitch ends, for some reason that she doesn’t understand. He opens the canteen and takes a drink, then recaps it, sets it aside, and goes back to scrutinizing the navigation panel. The protein bar he continues to ignore.

“Find anything new?”

“I caught something for a minute. One more hit to chart a trajectory and I’ll know which hyperspace lane they went to. We should take shifts.” There’s something accusing in his tone, like she had been derelict in her duty somehow by going to sleep. But she is right and she knows it. The computer is a much better pattern-matcher than a human, especially an exhausted human who stubbornly refuses to go to bed.

“How did you know you caught their drive signature?”

“Huh? Because it matched. I told you I used to run with them.”

“No, I mean how did you know you got a match?”

“Oh. Um. The computer beeped.”

“Yeah, the computer beeped. Which means you didn’t have to be sitting in that seat. The computer is searching for the pattern and will let you know if it gets a match, which it can do even if you’re asleep.”

He doesn’t respond to that verbally, but his shoulders hunch up a fraction higher.

“Look, if you want to take shifts, then I’ll take a shift. You can go eat your breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Cara rolls her eyes, even though he can’t see it. “Fine. Whatever. Let me know when you have a job for me.” She pushes herself out of the squeaky chair and goes down to the cabin, where she starts reorganizing cupboards. She’s gonna have to get rid of a lot of this shit. There’s no reason she needs four saucepans when she never cooks.

She finds an unused toothbrush in the drawer with the utensils (no idea why—categorization is harder than it seems like it ought to be). At the bottom of the cabinet with her clothes, she finds the set of sheets that fit the spare bed. She tosses them at the sleeping compartment where Mando can find them later. Since he refuses everything she offers him, he can put sheets on his own damn bed. His duffel is sitting in the middle of the floor again, so she kicks it over toward his bed too. She’s got enough trouble with her own shit without having to deal with his baggage too, both literally and metaphorically.

She’s got it all packed away again, a little more neatly this time, when she hears an alert from the computer. It must have that last data point Mando was looking for, which means she’ll finally have a job to do in the cockpit. On the way to the ladder, she grabs a bag of freeze-dried berries to snack on while they’re in hyperspace. She has learned that chewing helps keep the nausea at bay.

“Hey, Mando, got something?”

“I think so. Take a look,” he says. She leans in over his shoulder. He immediately shifts in his seat to put more space between them, so she does the same, carefully avoiding physical contact, and focuses on the screen where he has the data points laid out, three of them connected by an arrow that runs straight toward an entrance to a hyperspace lane. A lane which connects to at least a dozen systems, all containing multiple habitable planets and moons.

“Do you have an idea of where they might have jumped to?”

“Yes,” he says tersely. She had hoped he would have relaxed a little, but if anything, he seems _more_ tense. She raises her eyebrows in a silent request for more information. It takes at least five seconds before he responds, “They have a bolthole on Treos.”

“Now we’re talking,” Cara says, slapping him on the shoulder. He flinches. _Oops_. She drops into the pilot seat and tosses a berry into her mouth. She’s thrilled they finally have a destination, even if she has no idea where the hell it is. “Send me the heading and I’ll take us out.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the heading appears on her panel, so she locks it in while chewing. “We’ll be ready to jump to hyperspace in about five minutes. Want a berry?” Judging by the entrance and exit to the lane that Mando has programmed in, they’ll only be in hyperspace for about ten minutes. However, since she’s never heard of their apparent destination, who knows how long it will take them on the other end once they get back into real space.

“No thank you.”

“Are you sure? They’re good.”

“I’m not hungry.” He still hasn’t eaten the protein bar, she notices, even though she gave him plenty of time while she was organizing the cabin.

“Come on, Mando. You’ve got to eat.”

He doesn’t turn around. “Stop calling me that.”

Cara stops with her next berry halfway to her mouth and furrows her eyebrows at him. “What, stop calling you Mando?”

“Yes,” he says shortly.

“What should I call you then?”

“I don’t care; just not that.”

How about asshole? is her first thought, but she exercises great self-control and says instead, “Ok, I’ll call you Din.”

“Whatever.”

“All right, Din, you should eat something.” She sets the bag of berries next to him on the navigation panel. “You gotta take care of yourself or you’re not gonna be any good for the kid. So eat some already.”

He glances at the berries then quickly away again. He’s still hunched over the navigation panel, even though there’s nothing he needs to do right now. Cara purses her lips and stares at the curve of his back. Through the thin t-shirt, she can make out the shape of each vertebra. She can see the bruises and the curl at the nape of his neck. How weird must that feel to him, to be so exposed when he’s used to being concealed under layers of fabric and beskar? He’s just sitting there without a helmet on in front of another person for the first time since he was a kid, and he hasn’t said boo about it.

“Din, how are you feeling?”

There is a delay before he replies, “. . . The pain is manageable.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she says, although that’s interesting. What level of pain does he consider _manageable_? “Aren’t you. . . upset?”

His answer is more immediate this time. Through gritted teeth he says, “Of course I’m upset. They took my kid. I’m furious.”

He’s still missing the point, but she focuses on the curve of his back and his hunched shoulders. He doesn’t look furious, he looks miserable. Cara sighs and says gently, “Din. . . they took your helmet. They took your identity.”

Another delay. When he finally answers, his voice is rough around the edges. “Don’t you think I know that?” His hand goes up to cover the side of his face. He’s hiding again, but he can’t hide the bruises around his wrist and on the back of his neck.

“How do you feel about it?” she presses.

This time the delay is punctuated by his irregular breathing. Is he crying? Sounds like it, but she can’t see his face. It’s almost a minute before he rubs at his eyes with his fists again, like a kid.

“It’s not worth talking about. The only thing that matters to me is getting my kid back.” And just like that, his spine straightens and he’s all business again. “Are we ready for hyperspace?”

Cara looks down at the controls. “Yes, are you ready?”

“Of course,” he says flippantly. Sure. Of course he’s ready. Whatever would make her think he wasn’t?


	4. Hopeful Tooka

* * *

Hyperspace only gets you so far when your destination is not even a dot on the map. As soon as they exit the hyperspace lane, Mando—Din, but she can’t help but think of him as Mando—punches in the trajectory and destination, then pushes himself out of the navigator’s seat and limps down the ladder to the cabin without a word. Cara glances at the heading—it’ll take them at least a full day at max drive to get to Treos. Well, the computer knows where they’re going, so there’s no reason she needs to sit in the pilot seat twiddling her thumbs. So she picks up his abandoned protein bar off the panel and follows him down the ladder. She’s gonna make him eat it, maybe even shove it down his throat with her bare hands.

She doesn’t get the chance, because by the time she gets down to the cabin, he’s already disappeared into his sleeping compartment, with the hatch firmly shut. Fine, she’ll just save that goddamn protein bar for him tomorrow, because there’s no way she’s eating it. Jogan fruit tastes like vomit.

* * *

Once again Mando’s shouts pull her out of a sound sleep. Rubbing her face, she lays in her bed and listens for a minute, hoping he’ll wake himself up like he did last time, but no luck. Finally she opens her compartment and pushes herself to her feet. She’s not sure what she’s planning to do yet, but he would probably appreciate being woken out of whatever nightmare he’s reliving right now.

As she crosses the cabin, the shouts get louder and more intelligible. “Stop, please!” and “NO!” predominate, but there’s an occasional cry of something that sounds like “Deeka!” and “Don’t hurt him!” thrown in just to shake things up.

Again she waits with her hand up and ready to knock. When the cries continue, she takes a deep breath and raps her knuckles against the hatch. The shouts break off abruptly with a gasp, then all she can hear is Mando’s uneven breathing.

“Ma—Din?” Cara says tentatively. “Are you ok?”

“. . . Yes,” he rasps. More ragged breathing. That does not sound like someone who is ok.

“Can you open the door?”

“I’m all right,” he says, but his voice breaks on the last word, proving him a liar.

“It doesn’t sound like it,” she says.

“Cara, please. . .”

“You’d feel better if you’d talk about it.”

No answer. Cara waits, hoping the hatch will slide open. No such luck. “Din. . .”

“. . . Just go away.”

“Not gonna do that.”

“I’m not opening the door.”

Cara presses her lips together in irritation. “Ok, I’ll just sit out here,”

“Suit yourself.”

Well shit, now she has to really do it. She lowers herself down to sit on the floor, with her back against the wall and her legs stretched out. From this vantage point she can see the dust that has collected in the corners and a discarded sock that got shoved behind the folded table.

Mando seems to have gotten his breathing under control, except for the occasional sharp inhalation that may be a sniffle, may be a huff of irritation. The silence stretches out. This is definitely a situation that requires patience. Luckily Cara has lots of time on her hands. Unluckily, patience is not her strong suit. Finally she says, “So. . . the stars are lovely tonight. All shiny and pretty.”

No response.

Cara sniffs. “Smells kinda musty down here, doesn’t it? I’ll have to turn up the air recyclers, now that there’s two of us.” _And one of us is always barefoot,_ she thinks, but she keeps that part to herself.

No response.

She pats the floor and feels a bump from a bolt that is sticking up a little. “Huh, there’s a loose screw on one of the deck plates out here. Have to tighten that down. Actually, since you’re the one going around barefoot, maybe you could do it. I’m so busy, you know. Lots of. . . buttons to push and dials to turn. Levers, you know. Busy busy busy.”

No response.

“Kind of nice down here on the floor, actually. Comfier than I expected. Cooler too.”

No response. Mando’s breathing has evened out. Maybe he’s gone back to sleep? Rude of him not to inform her. This is pointless. He’s fine. Of course he’s fine—he’s a Mandalorian. They’ve made being unflappable into a way of life. Since he’s not going to open the door, she may as well go back to bed. If she doesn’t get enough sleep, she gets grumpy, and that probably won’t end well for either of them.

“All right, well, it’s been fun,” she says, pushing herself back up to her feet. “I’m glad we had this little chat. I guess I’ll go back to bed now.”

No response. Whatever, Mando. Her bed is calling.

* * *

The computer wakes her only four hours later. Not nearly enough. She can feel a headache lurking behind her eyes. Coffee will keep it at bay, although it might not be enough to improve her mood, which she would characterize as. . . churlish. Not quite as bad as surly, but could get there quick if something (or someone) sets her off.

Din’s sleeping compartment is half-open and she can see him curled up inside, like a sea-mouse in a den. His hair is a mess and his hands are tucked under his cheek, mouth open. It’s his fault she was awake half the night, and now he’s sleeping like a baby while she’s up already. It’s not fair.

She goes to the “galley” to make breakfast. Usually she would just make coffee and eat a protein bar, but when she opens her little cooler to get the milk, she realizes she has two eggs and a small package of smoked meat left over. They were a treat she had bought herself with her first paycheck, and they are about to go bad anyway, so she might as well cook them. It’s not just because she’s trying to tempt Mando to eat, she tells herself. She wants eggs, that’s all.

She doesn’t bother to be quiet while she’s cooking. Mando has to get up soon anyway, so he won’t mind if she wakes him up. She scrambles up the eggs and tosses the chopped meat in with them, then pushes the pan into the cooker. While it’s cooking, she makes herself a cup of coffee. The smell of the coffee and food is definitely improving her mood.

When the cooker dings, Mando sits up. His hair is wild and his eyes are rimmed with red. When he looks up to find her raising her eyebrows at him, his cheeks turn red too. Well, that’s interesting.

“Morning, Mando—um—Din.”

“Good Morning,” he mumbles, running a hand through his hair. He opens the hatch the rest of the way, swings his legs out, and pushes himself up to his feet, pulling his blanket around his shoulders. He has taken three steps toward the cockpit, dragging the hem of the blanket behind him, when she puts the pan of food on the table. He stops walking and looks at the food, but doesn’t come toward the table.

“I made us breakfast,” she says unnecessarily. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“I’m not—“

“Yeah, I know, you’re not hungry. Whatever.”

For a minute, he stands facing the ladder to the cockpit, frozen. Glitching out again.

“Yo, Din? You with me? Food.”

His eyes cut to her and quickly away again. “I—I don’t know what to say.”

Oh, so _that’s_ what that glitch means. She’s seen him go still before, but with the helmet, when she couldn’t see his face, she took it to mean that he knew the answer and was just waiting for everyone else to figure it out. Now she knows better.

“How about thank you?” she suggests.

“. . . Thank you.”

“Good boy. Now sit down and eat it.”

“I need to check the coordinates.”

“I have it right here,” she says, holding out the datapad. “We have about four hours left to our destination. Plenty of time to eat and still get ready.”

He looks back and forth between the ladder and the table while she smiles at him encouragingly. Her smile has morphed into more of an exasperated grimace by the time he finally says, “All right, thank you,” and moves toward the table.

“That’s good. Have a seat.” She takes out her only two plates (or, at least the only two she can currently find), fills them both with scrambled eggs, and sets one in front of each chair. Then she sits down in her chair and starts shoveling in the eggs. It takes him at least fifteen seconds before he finally pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders and sits. She knows because she counts the seconds, every excruciating one of them. If she had taken that much time to come to the table when she was a kid, her mom would’ve taken the food away and thrown it out for the grazers.

Mando sticks his hands out from under the blanket, picks up his fork, and then looks up at her through his lashes, head bent forward. When she makes eye contact, his gaze quickly drops to his plate. Rolling her eyes, she stuffs the last bite in her mouth, then deliberately gets up and walks away from the table so he can tell she isn’t watching him eat.

While he eats with one hand and stares at the datapad in the other, she starts getting ready. First to get dressed, which is a trick with him sitting right there. Although all his attention is on the datapad, so maybe he won’t even notice. Turning to face the wall, she whips off her t-shirt and pulls on her long-sleeved undershirt instead. She fastens on her body armor and shoulder spaulders, then starts on her weapons, a process which takes a while.

“So, what are we going to find down there?” she asks, strapping on her leg holster.

“My kid, I hope,” he says. She turns her head to check if he’s serious, but finds him still with his back to her, apparently engrossed in his datapad. She hopes he’s eating those eggs, because she definitely doesn’t want them to go to waste. She has gone back to fixing her hip holster when he continues, “We have to find him,” sounding more like he's talking to himself than to her. “He’s the only reason—“ He breaks off.

Cara wants to know how that sentence was supposed to end, cuz it sounds like maybe Mando is saying he doesn’t have anything else to live for. “Reason for what?”

Mando shakes his head. “Nothing. Never mind.”

She stares at his back for a minute. It occurs to her that if they find the kid dead, or even worse, if he gets killed when they are trying to rescue him, she might lose Mando too. The thought makes her stomach drop, but the only thing she can think to do about it is make sure the kid doesn’t end up dead.

“Ok,” she says carefully, “What I meant was, how many of them are there? How well are they armed?”

“Three. Xi’an has a blaster, an assault rifle, and a knife with an eight inch blade. Qin has two pistols and a . . . whip. Mayfield has a E-11 blaster rifle.”

Cara looks up from her examination of her blaster. “Stormtrooper weapon?”

“He took it off one he killed.”

“Ok. What about the terrain?”

He puts his fork down. Is he even eating anymore? “Underground bunker. We’ll have to put down about half a klick away and approach from the rear. Otherwise they’ll see us coming.

Cara attaches her final weapon, her ankle knife sheath, and pulls her boot up to cover it. If Mando’s not going to eat those eggs, then she definitely is. When she turns around, however, she finds that his plate is empty. Completely empty—almost looks like he licked it.

“Did you like those eggs?” she asks, trying not to ruin it by smiling.

“Yes, thank you,” he says. “Where’s your toolbox?”

Cara raises her eyebrows. So he _was_ listening last night. “Under your sleeping compartment.”

“Ok.” As he gets up, he tucks the datapad under his arm, then picks up his plate and puts it in the sink. He’s not just going to leave it there, is he? Yep, he’s going to leave it there. And he left the blanket on his chair.

Cara decides to ignore the plate, along with the rest of the dishes for now, and goes up to the cockpit, where she watches the monitors and listens to Mando work on the loose screw. There’s a bit more banging around that she expects, and she probably could’ve done it faster, but at least it’s keeping him busy. Better that than him hunched over the navigation panel, trying to do a job the computer could do better without him.

It’s almost half an hour before he comes up the ladder with boots on, laced and tied. Aww. . . she kind of misses the bare feet. He’s still wearing the jammies, but he’s added a light jacket, and he’s got a blaster and two stun grenades in pouches attached to his belt.

“How much further?” he asks, even though he must already know the answer since he’s been staring at the datapad all morning.

“You tell me,” she says.

“Fifty-seven minutes,” he says precisely, without even checking the datapad. He sits down in the navigator seat and starts untying his boots. Cara watches him curiously. Why is he untying his boots when he must’ve just tied them? Mando adjusts the tongue of the boot, ties it again, then unties it and shoves his pantleg down into the sides of the boot and tries again. Again he unties it and tries to smooth out the pantleg. Even though she can’t see his whole face, she can tell he’s frowning by the wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“Something wrong with your boot?”

“No, it’s fine.” He pulls the laces tighter and reties the boot, then unties it again and folds the pantleg over so it fits tighter over his ankle.

“Doesn’t seem like it’s fine. What kind of socks are you wearing?”

“I don’t have any.”

“No socks? Who doesn’t put socks in their emergency bag?”

Mando huffs. “The kid found my bag and took everything out. I thought I got it all back but I must’ve missed the socks.” He shakes his head and resumes adjusting the boot. He’s scowling at it and chewing on the inside of his cheek; she can see the muscle jumping at his temple.

Time to lighten the mood with one of her patented mood-lighteners, aka sarcasm. Good for all tense situations. “I thought you would’ve got better at that parenting thing by now. Maybe we could get you a remedial course or something.”

Aw shit, his frown has deepened. That wasn’t what she was going for at all. She was trying to lighten the mood, not irritate him. Backpedal Backpedal! “Sorry, Mando. I didn’t mean it. Sarcasm is how I show love.”

His head pops up. He’s glitching again, but this time it’s not the _I don’t know what to say_ face. . . his expression reminds her of a tooka they had when she was a kid. Her asshole step-dad liked to play mind games with it (like he did with everyone). He would hold out a treat to lure it in, then when it got close enough, he would smack it on the head. Even after her mother ran the asshole off with a shotgun, the tooka still had that look every time it was offered a treat: half-hopeful, half-wary. So why does Mando look like he thinks maybe he’s walking into a trap? Does she want to find out? Or does she just want to drop it? Yeah, dropping it seems like the best course of action, at least for now.

“Ok, fine. I’ll stop. Here, hang on.” She hustles down the ladder, noticing on the way through the cabin that he not only put the tools away but washed up the dishes and put them away too. How nice. Too bad his duffel bag is still sitting in the middle of the cabin. She kicks it back over toward his sleeping compartment (it doesn’t clunk this time), then she digs a pair of socks out of her clothes locker and takes it back up to the cockpit. Mando hasn’t moved, except he’s gone back to chewing the inside of his cheek. His face still has a hint of hopeful tooka, but his anxious baby porg eyes are back. “Here, these should help,” she says, holding out the socks. Help his feet, yes, but also help smooth some of that anxiety out of his face and relax that jumping muscle at his temple.

Blinking, he takes the socks from her hand. “Thank you,” he says, actually making eye contact, and not even out of the side of his eye. Full, real eye contact, and it’s—wow, it lasts for about a half-second before he ducks his head and starts taking off his boots again to put the socks on.

When his boots are tied, he stands up and rocks back and forth, wiggling his toes.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you,” he says. He sits back down and leans over the navigation console again. Dammit—his jaw muscle is still jumping, she can see it even though his back is turned. Gonna take more than a pair of socks to calm those nerves.


	5. Yeah

* * *

Hiking. Yeah, hiking is fun. Mando coulda warned her their little “half a klick” would be straight uphill in light rain, through dense forest and groundcover covered in inch-long thorns. Mando, who is walking ahead of her, hasn’t said a word since they started the slog. He’s limping again, so clearly he didn’t use enough Bacta, no matter what he claims.

“Do we have a plan of attack here?” she asks, trying not to pant.

“There is only one entrance. I’ll toss in the stun grenade, then I’ll go in first and you follow.”

“I’m the one with the armor,” she points out.

Mando turns his head and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, then pauses, frowns, and closes his mouth again.

“What?”

“Nothing. I guess you’re right,” he says, facing front again.

“So you want me to go in first?”

“No. It’s not fair for you to put yourself in danger for my sake. I’ll still go in first.”

Cara rolls her eyes but doesn’t disagree. This is not an argument she’s going to win, so she might as well drop it.

The “underground bunker”, once they finally reach it, turns out to be more of a cave, with a narrow opening set into the rock. They each take a side, and Mando counts down 3-2-1 with his fingers before he tosses the stun grenade in. After the initial BANG, Mando goes in blaster-first. Cara follows him, and finds. . . nothing. Well, not nothing; there are a few pieces of furniture, but no people. A rickety table in one corner with abandoned dishes on it and three folding chairs arranged around it; a small bed pushed up against the opposite wall, rumpled blanket hanging off the side. The only light is what’s leaking in from the entrance, leaving the corners in shadows.

As Mando examines the table, Cara turns on her flashlight and shines it around the corners of the room. As the beam passes the bed, she sees something silver glinting from under the hem of the blanket. She goes over and moves the blanket, to find a metal ball, smooth silver, with a hole in it that has treads like something was screwed into it.

“Hey Mando, look at this,” she says. He looks up and she tosses the ball to him. He catches it one-handed, turns it over, and seriously glitches out. Like, completely freezes, mouth open, eyes vacant. “Din, you ok?”

“It’s mine.”

“Huh?”

“The kid. He likes to play with it. He had it when we went down.”

“That means they were here, right?”

“. . . Yeah.”

“So that’s good.”

“. . . Yeah.” He’s squeezing the ball so tight his fingers are turning white, and he’s staring at it so hard she’s surprised it hasn’t exploded.

“Din?” Cara says. He doesn’t respond. She puts her hand over his and pats it. “That’s good.”

“. . . Yeah.”

“We’ll find him.”

“. . . Yeah.”

She gives his hand a little squeeze and releases it. “So we’re back to square one, searching for the drive signature. Except this time we should be able to pick up the trail easier, since we know they were here.”

“. . . Yeah.”

“Do you remember how to say anything other than Yeah?”

His eyes meet hers for a second. His face shows a hint of surprise, then there’s a brief flicker of amusement, a tiny tilt to one corner of his mouth.

“. . . Yeah.”

She can’t help but laugh. He doesn’t join in, but she can see him watching her out of the corner of his eye, and his mouth is still quirked up, just the slightest bit. It’s the first hint of a smile she’s seen from him, and she has to admit, if only to herself, that she likes it a little too much.

“Come on, let’s go find that kid,” she says, waving him toward the exit. Back on mission, Dune. Eyes on the prize.

* * *

As soon as they’re back on the ship, he immediately climbs the ladder up to the cockpit, keeping his left leg stiff, where he sits hunched and silent while she starts up the engines and prepares for flight.

“Your leg still bothering you?”

“No.”

“You were limping. There’s more Bacta if you want it.”

“It’s fine. It just needs to finish healing.”

“Ok, ok.” Then she’s just waiting for him to give her a heading, but it’s slow in coming. Finally she glances at his back. He hasn’t taken off the jacket, and he’s got the collar flipped up around his ears, covering the bruises. He’s hiding again, but she can still see the curl at the back of his neck brushing against his collar. It looks soft, and vulnerable, she’s sure much more vulnerable than he realizes. She feels an urge to touch it, let it slide through her fingers . . . she won’t do it, of course, but she can’t help but want to.

Almost as if he can feel her looking, he turns his head toward her, but when he catches her eye, he quickly turns away again. One hand comes up to cover the side of his face, but not before she sees that his cheek has turned a delicate shade of pink.

“Um. How’s it going? Find anything?” she says to break the awkward silence.

“I found a trace. It’s a start.”

“That’s great. Send it over.”

He doesn’t say anything, but the heading appears on her screen, so she takes them out. Once they have escaped the atmosphere, she turns in her seat. He’s still got his back to her. The collar is covering the curl now. Pity.

“Find any more breadcrumbs?”

“Two more data points. We can follow it.”

“No, the computer can follow it,” she says, orienting the ship in the direction of the heading he send over, “We are going to eat something.” She gets up and heads toward the ladder, hoping he’ll follow. He doesn’t.

“I’m not hungry.” As he says that, his stomach growls. Liar.

“Uh-huh,” she says knowingly, slapping him on the shoulder. He flinches. Oops, right. Shouldn’t touch him without warning. “Come on and eat. The computer can follow the trail better than we can, remember?”

He still doesn’t get up. He’s frowning down at the navigation panel, jaw muscle jumping.

“Come on.” She slides her hand down his arm, catches his hand, and pulls him to his feet. “It’s important to eat. You’re not going to do the kid any good if you pass out from low blood sugar.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he does follow her down to the galley, so she’ll count it as a win. She rummages in the “pantry” for food.

“So what can I get you? We’ve got protein bars, and hey wouldya look at that, more protein bars.”

“I guess I’ll take a protein bar.”

“Ok, coming right up. What flavor?”

“I don’t care.”

“Jogan berry it is,” she says, tossing him a bar. Then she sits down in her chair at the table. He’s still standing, looking back at cockpit uncertainly. Before he can disappear back up the ladder, she holds out a datapad. “You can keep an eye on it from here, ok?”

He looks back and forth between the datapad and the cockpit a few times, then finally says, “yeah, ok.” He takes the datapad, sits down, and immediately hunches over it, head bowed, protein bar abandoned on the table.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

He side-eyes the bar, then her, then back to the bar again. His stomach rumbles. He picks up the bar and opens the wrapper, but doesn’t take a bite. Instead he glances up at her through his lashes, then quickly away again.

“Well?” she says, through a mouthful of protein bar. She knows what he wants but she’s not going to give it to him this time.

“I’m sorry. I’m not used to eating in front of people,” he admits.

“I’m not going to judge you for eating,” she says. “It’s normal human behavior.”

“I know that. It’s just—it’s weird for me.” He stares at the bar silently with those baby porg eyes. His breathing is fast and shallow. After an eternity, he glances back up at her, and then inhales sharply, takes a bite and quickly puts the bar down. He covers his mouth with his hand while he chews. After he swallows, he glances up again, but when their eyes meet, he immediately looks back down at the datapad, cheeks turning red. His hand comes up to cover his face, fingers curled around the end of his eyebrow. Hiding again, and she’s getting pretty sick of it.

“Stop hiding,” she says impulsively.

His hand goes down, but he doesn’t look up. “Sorry. Just—I’m not used to people seeing my face. I don’t —I don’t know how to react.”

Well, he’s going to have to get used to it, and having her look at him is pretty low-stakes compared to when he gets out into the real world. He’s going to have to get over this self-consciousness and figure out how to blend in. The more comfortable you are with being seen, the less people actually see you.

She stands up. “Din, come here,” she says, holding out her hand. He just blinks at her. “Come on, I won’t bite you. Just come in here for a minute.” When he still doesn’t move, she goes around the table, takes his hand ( _flinch_ ) and pulls him up. “Come in here,” she says as she pulls him to the little bathroom and puts him in front of the mirror, which is cracked on one corner and spotted with dirt and who knows what else.

Cara stands behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders, which are tight. He flinches, just a flicker, then goes still. His breathing is shallow, and his eyes are cut to the side, toward the door.

“Look at yourself,” she says. She waits, and after a minute he reluctantly makes eye contact with his reflection. “What do you see?”

“. . . Bruises,” he says, mouth twisting. “Messy hair.” He tries to smooth it down but it’s not working. The curls just pop up again. He pushes his hand through them, fingers catching on the tangles. He starts trying to work them out, wincing as it pulls his hair. Cara feels a pang of sympathy for him, because he’s got it all backwards.

She puts her hand over his to still it. Again that tiny flinch. “Din, look at me,” she says gently. It takes a minute before he meets her gaze in the mirror. Oh, his sad, anxious eyes. She can’t stand it.

“Ask me what I see.”

“I don’t—you see the same thing I see. What else—?”

“Just ask me. “

“. . . What do you see?”

“I see a man who gave up everything to save a kid who needed him. It looks pretty good on you. I don’t assume to know everything about you, Din, but I do know that. And I’m looking forward to getting to know the rest.”

His cheeks are turning red again, but he doesn’t put his hand over his face this time. His chin wrinkles up, and the corner of his mouth pulls back into a wan half-smile.

“Thank you,” he says, voice cracking. She kind of wants to hug him, but she remembers that little flinch and decides against it. She’s trying to make him feel better, not scare him off.

She manages to convince him to eat the rest of the protein bar, although she has to turn her back while he does it. At least he’s getting some nutrition in. After it’s gone, she hands him the datapad and says “time to get some sleep.”

She’s expecting a fight, but he just nods and heads to the sleeping compartment. He lays down but leaves the door open.

“Aren’t you going to close the hatch?”

“I will in a minute,” he says, already engrossed in the navigation information on the datapad. Whatever. She doesn’t have the energy to fight him. If he wants to stare at the datapad all night and supervise the computer, more power to him. She’s going to bed.

* * *

Cara’s pulled from a sound sleep several hours later by Mando shouting again. It’s louder this time, his voice cracked and hoarse. She can even hear his rapid, uneven breathing.

“No! Stop! Don’t. NO!! DEEKA NO!!”

She puts her hands over her face and debates with herself. Last time she woke him up, he wouldn’t even talk to her. Is it worth it to try again? As she’s laying there trying to decide what to do, his shouts fade to a plaintive whisper.

“No, please. . . I don’t want to. . . No. . .”

Ok, she can’t just sit and listen to that. She has to do something, even if it’s not appreciated. Hitting the controls to open her hatch, she swings her legs off the side of the bed compartment, takes one step through the dark cabin, and her foot hits something soft, something that squawks and squirms away. Squinting into the darkness, she realizes it’s Mando. What the hell is he doing on the floor?

Mando scrambles back against the wall, feet sliding on the floor in his socks. He’s tangled up in his blanket. His eyes are very wide in the semi-dark, and his breathing comes in irregular gasps.

“Din?” Cara says, frowning. What’s wrong with him? Is he actually awake? “Hey, Din. Hey. Wake up.” She slides off the bed and holds out her hand toward him, thinking she’s going to shake his shoulder. Before she can even touch him, he shies away, shrinking back into the corner.

“No no no,” he cries. “No, please don’t!”

“Din, it’s me. It’s Cara. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The shouts break off. For a second he stares at her, breathing hard, while she tries to look non-threatening. Then, to her shock and horror, his face crumples and he bursts into tears. His knees pull up convulsively and his arms curl around his head.

“. . . Oh, Din. . .”

“I want my kid,” he chokes out. “I want my kid. . .” His voice trails off into harsh sobs that shake his entire body.

“Din, honey. . .” Her voice trails off too, because she is completely out of her element here. She’s never had a Mandalorian start sobbing on her floor before, and she has no idea what to do. What are you supposed to do for a crying person again? Touch them maybe, but that flinch. . . yeah, he doesn’t want to be touched. “Din, it’s ok,” she says gently. He continues to cry hard. His hand goes over his mouth like he’s trying to hold in the sobs, but it’s not working.

She reaches out helplessly, her hand hovering near his shoulder. He jerks away, shaking his head, then just as quickly moves toward her. His forehead presses against her shoulder and his fingers close around a fistful of her sleeve. She’s surprised, but wraps her arms around him automatically. It’s like trying to hug a droid. He’s all hard knees and elbows and taut, trembling muscles. His breathing is loud in her ear. The shoulder of her shirt is getting soaked. Total sensory overload.

“It’s ok,” she murmurs into his ear, “We’ll get him back, it’s gonna be ok.” On its own, her hand finds the curl at the back of his neck. It’s soft as it slides through her fingers.

After a few minutes, he starts getting heavier, like he’s melting into her. His breathing evens out, with the exception of an occasional hitch. Good, he’s calming down. . . Yeah, he’s falling asleep on her. Damn, the floor is hard and her butt is going numb. If she has to spend the rest of the night like this, her back will never recover.

“Hey, Din,” she says, patting his back. His fingers unclench from her sleeve and he sits up, blinking and rubbing his face.His eyes are red and his nose is running. “Hey, this floor is too hard.”

“I’m—I’m sorry,” he says, sniffling and chewing on his lip. “I can—I’ll go back to my bed. Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall apart.”

“No, I didn’t mean—I mean. It’s ok, you don’t need to be sorry about anything. I just meant—let’s move to the bed.”

He looks up doubtfully at the opening to her sleeping compartment. “You mean—your bed?”

“Well, you don’t seem to want to sleep in yours for some reason. Mine’s big enough for two.”

He doesn’t respond right away. Just as she’s thinking she probably offended him somehow, his eyes fill up with tears again, although she can’t figure out why. He sniffles hard and drags his wrist under his nose. “Ok.”

“Ok, come on.” She catches his hand and tugs him up, and he follows her without a fight. He climbs into the bed and curls up on his side with his hands under his cheek. Cara lays back and tries not to look at him, because his sad red-rimmed eyes are killing her. She wants to kiss them all better, but somehow she thinks that is unlikely to help.

“You know, Din, if you want to talk about—“ _about what the hell you were yelling that you didn’t want to do_ “—anything, you can talk to me.”

He doesn’t say anything. Shit. Keep talking, her brain encourages her, because her brain is stupid.

“I mean, you can tell me whatever you want and I’ll just listen. At least I’ll try to listen. I’m not very good at it but I’ll try,” she babbles, “I promise not to be sarcastic.”

He still doesn’t say anything. He must not believe her. “Ok, maybe I’ll be a little sarcastic, but it’s only because I can’t help it.”

Still no response, she turns her head to see his expression, and discovers that he’s asleep again. Oh. How nice for him. Too bad she can’t do the same.


	6. That Curl

She lies there awake for half an hour before she finally gives up. What is the point of lying in bed if she can’t farking _sleep_? Might as well go supervise the computer, right? On her way across the cabin, she almost steps on the metal ball, lying on the floor next to where Mando was sleeping. She scoops it up and sets it next to him on the bed, then pours a cup of coffee with a generous splash of milk and several spoonfuls of sweetener, and climbs the ladder to the cockpit, where she checks their heading. It’s still the same as last night, although it looks like Mando adjusted the search radius. She blearily watches the search patterns flash across the screen. She has no idea what any of it means, but nothing looks the slightest bit promising.

She’s almost asleep in the pilot’s seat when Mando comes up the ladder with both of their blankets wrapped around him this time. They’re so bulky he has to turn sideways to sit in the navigator’s seat.

“Morning, Din,” she says, trying not to smile. Not that he’s looking at her anyway.

“Morning, Cara,” he replies. He pulls out two protein bars from under the blanket and places one (Starblossom flavor, her favorite) on the panel next to her. Next out come two canteens of water, one of which he sets next to the protein bar.

“Are these for me?”

“It’s important to eat to keep your blood sugar up,” he says, without making eye contact. Hmm, that sounds familiar. “You can’t survive on just coffee.”

“Oookay.” She takes the bar and starts to eat. After a minute, she hears the sound of him unwrapping the other bar. He’s got the blankets pulled up, half-hiding his face, but it doesn’t cover the muscle at his temple. She can see it moving as he chews. It also doesn’t hide the vulnerable curl at the back of his neck. He’s looking at the navigation panel, but she’s looking at that curl, remembering how soft it was. She finds herself wanting to touch it again, which is probably a bad idea. Definitely a bad idea.

After several minutes of silence, he clears his throat. “Um. . . I’m sorry about last night.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean to fall apart. It won’t—“

“You don’t have to apologize for having emotions, Din.”

“I shouldn’t have taken your bed.”

“You didn’t take it. I told you, it’s big enough for two. Did you sleep well?”

“. . .Yes.”

“So that’s good then, right?”

“. . . Yes.”

“Great, then I don’t want to hear any more apologies for being human. Let’s talk about where we’re going. Did you find anything?”

“Um. . .” She hears him swallow, then the pause lingers. When he finally speaks, his voice is raspy. “I found. . .” He clears his throat and tries again. “. . . I found a few more data points last night, but they don’t make sense.”

“Show me,” she says, standing up and leaning over his shoulder. This time he doesn’t lean away. If anything, he leans _in_.

He sets the protein bar down and wipes his hands on _her blanket_. “Here.” He points. “And here.” He points to another hit, almost a parsec away. “But I don’t know how they got from here to there.”

“Hmm. . .” Cara reaches over his shoulder and scrolls up, exposing a different sector of the system and another hit. “How about that?”

“I saw that one too, but it doesn’t make sense either. It’s a triangle—there’s no trajectory.”

“Looks like an arc. . . almost looks like they doubled back.”

He jerks his head up at her, eyes shining. “That’s right. They must’ve changed course. Thank you.”

She means to just put her hand on his shoulder, but somehow her thumbs brushes against that curl. Of course, he flinches. She pulls her hand back.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“No, it’s just an unconscious reaction. I—I don’t mind.” He keeps his gaze fixed on the navigation panel, but adjusts the blanket down a little and shifts so his neck is next to her hand, a clear invitation to touch. So what is she supposed to do? She wants to touch him, he wants to be touched (despite the flinch), so she touches him. She lays her hand on the back of his neck, gently, mindful of the bruises, and slides her thumb over the curl. He tips his head forward a little. She’s sure he’s just looking down, but the effect is to give her better access.

_Back on mission, Dune_ , she reminds herself, so she keeps her eyes on the navigation panel over his shoulder, but she can’t help but take him up on the invitation to slide that curl through her fingers, back and forth, while at the same time pretending to ignore the fact that his shoulder is brushing against her stomach.

“So if they reversed course. . .” He taps the screen to scroll the display in the direction of the supposed trajectory, and keys in the new search pattern. While the computer searches, he sits unmoving, head bent forward. She leans in a little and discovers that his eyes are closed. Is he falling asleep?

The computer dings and they both jump. Mando sits up straight, and Cara yanks her hand back from his neck. “Um. . .What do you think? Did we find something?” she says awkwardly.

“Uh. . . yeah. Yeah, I think so. Three data points in a row anyway. We can follow the trajectory. Yeah. Ok. Let’s . . . um. . . let’s go.”

She squeezes around him, carefully avoiding physical contact, and picks up his abandoned protein bar. “Tell you what: you eat, and I’ll fly,” she say says as she puts the bar into his hand.

“Yeah, ok.”

She sits in the pilot’s seat and punches in the heading, keeping their speed down. She can hear the sound of him chewing, and when she turns her head, she finds that he hasn’t turned away and she can see his face. He makes brief eye contact, his cheeks redden, and his head jerks away, hand coming up to cover his mouth. Still hiding, dammit.

A full twelve hours of searching nets them one more data point, enough to determine they are still on the right track, but not much else. Mando has the blanket pulled up so it's covering the curl. His body language definitely isn’t inviting any more physical contact. He hasn’t even looked up from the navigation display for hours, and his eyebrows, the only part of his face she can see, have gradually moved down and closer together. Finally Cara’s had enough.

“I’m going to bed,” she announces.

Mando, who is leaning on his fist, jerks his head up from the navigation panel where she’s pretty sure he was sleeping. “. . . Ok,” he says, and sinks back down again.

Whatever. She intentionally brushes past him on her way to the ladder, and he flinches. _Oops_.

Halfway through the night cycle, she hears a noise—not a shout this time, but a rustling sound and a dull thump. She counts to ten in her head, then hits the button to open her hatch and finds Mando settling in on the floor. He’s got the ball clutched in one hand and a datapad in the other. His head tips up a little and he looks at her out of the corner of his eye, like she won’t figure out he’s looking.

“Want to come up here?”

“. . . Yeah.”

Cara rolls her eyes. “Come on then.”

He’s got his pillow with him this time. Once again he curls up on his side, hands under his cheek, and Cara lays on her back, arms behind her head.

“So. . . anything you’d like to talk about?” she says to the ceiling.

“. . . Like what?”

“Like. . . why you prefer to sleep on the floor?”

“I don’t know—I guess I’m used to it.”

“But you don’t mind sleeping in my bed.”

“No.”

“Huh.” Cara waits for him to expand on that theme, maybe state a thesis, add supporting details, anything really, but there’s nothing for at least a minute. She turns a little to see if his expression will give him away, and finds him asleep again. Dammit.

* * *

They lose the farking trail again. It’s just gone. Poof, no more data points. Mando huddles in the navigator’s seat with both blankets pulled tight around himself, hiding his face except for his eyebrows again, but that’s ok, because they are broadcasting his frustration loud and clear. He ignores the protein bar she brings him until she leaves the cockpit for a few minutes. When she comes back, the wrapper is crumpled and empty on the cockpit floor.

Cara picks up the wrapper. “You dropped this,” she says, laying it on the panel next to him.

He spares it a sideways glance. “Oh. . . sorry.”

“Any luck?” She moves in closer to look over his shoulder and catches a whiff of stale sweat. How many days has it been since he took a shower? And he’s been wearing the same clothes basically since he came on board. No wonder he’s starting to smell. His hair is looking a little greasy too.

“No,” he grumps. “I had to widen the search grid and start over.”

“So the computer is running the search algorithm then?”

“Yes. It’ll take at least two hours to finish this sector.”

“Great,” she says, slapping him on the shoulder ( _flinch_ ). “You have time to relax, eat something—“

He holds up the bar wrapper. “I already did.”

“—Maybe take a shower. . .”

“I don’t—Yeah, ok, maybe I need a shower. Will you monitor navigation while I’m gone?”

“Um. . .ok,” she says reluctantly. She wants to remind him that navigation doesn’t really need to be monitored, but that runs the risk that he might decide he doesn’t really need to take a shower, when in fact he _does really need to take a shower._

So Cara sits in the navigation seat and increases the contrast on the display and changes the aspect ratio so she can actually see it. Then she plays a game on her datapad while the computer does its thing. Of course, Mando has been in the bathroom for less than ten minutes when the console beeps. She’s leaning over trying to make sense of the information it’s spitting out at her when Mando comes tearing up the ladder, still wearing the same clothes. She doesn’t even have a chance to try to get out of the way; he just leans in over her to peer at the display. Now she’s the one with her shoulder against his stomach. His hair is wet and his shirt is sticking to his damp skin, so apparently he did indeed shower. She can’t help but notice he smells a bit better, since he’s so in her personal space here.

“Got it!” he says triumphantly. She looks up at him and he actually makes eye contact and almost _almost_ smiles. Damn, so close. At least his eyes are sparkling with excitement.

“So do they have a bolthole around here?”

“A few, but I’m not sure which one they’re headed to yet. We’ll have to see which hyperspace lane they took, just need two more data points to triangulate the trajectory.”

Oh boy, two more data points. The computer can perform the search by itself, right? _Wrong_! Mando has to sit in the navigator’s seat and micromanage the search. But first! He has to get both blankets and wrap up again like a farking tauntaun herder. Then he has to readjust all the settings she just fixed while muttering in Mandoa or whatever that language is called. Whatever. She’s going to bed. She’s tired, and when she gets tired, she blows right past churlish to surly. One surly person is enough around here; if they’re both surly, she can’t be held responsible for the explosion that will result.

“Can I have my blanket please?” she says, holding out her hand.

His head comes up from the navigation panel, finally. “Huh?”

“My blanket. You’re hiding in it,” she says patiently ( _so_ patiently), “Can I have it back?”

He looks down at himself, frowning. “Oh. Of course. Sorry.” He unwraps one layer and hands it to her. She heads for bed, leaving him sitting in the navigator’s seat. She leaves her hatch open, and about fifteen minutes later, he comes down the ladder and stands next to it, head tipped forward and eyes on the floor. He’s got a datapad in one hand, and the metal ball in the other. He’s looking up at her through his lashes, so she knows he can see her. She raises her eyebrows at him. He doesn’t say anything, but his cheeks turn an interesting shade of pink.

“How’s the computer doing on that search algorithm?”

“Still working on it.”

“And yet you’re down here.”

He shrugs. “The computer can work on its own. It’s better at pattern-matching than I am anyway.” He says that last part through a yawn that he hides behind the hem of the blanket.

“Huh. That sounds familiar,” she says, scooting over on the bed to make room for him. It’s either that or trip over him later on the floor, apparently. Why did she bother cleaning out that other bed again?

“A smart lady I know said it.” He settles in next to her, on the outside this time, and tucks the datapad under his pillow, which is still on her bed from last night. He keeps the ball in his hand, his thumb tracing the indentation where it fits onto the drive lever.

“So. . . what are we talking about tonight?” _In the thirty seconds before you fall asleep. . ._

“Um. . . how about nothing?”

“I know! We could talk about why you want to sleep in my bed and not your own.”

“. . . No thanks.”

“Ok, then, you can tell me what your nightmares are about.”

“Can’t you figure that out?”

“Somewhat.” She has guesses. Oh yes, she has guesses. It’s hard to know if they’re correct guesses unless he fills in a few of the blanks. “I wouldn’t mind if you told me more.”

“Well, they’re gone. When I sleep here, they’re gone.”

“Might still do you some good to talk about them,” she suggests mildly.

“If they’re gone, I don’t need to talk about them.”

Cara turns her head, thinking he _must_ be joking this time, but he just looks vaguely confused, like he can’t see any reason he should talk about his emotions.

“I’m guessing the Mandalorians didn’t invest a lot of money in child therapists.”

“What does that mean?”

Hmm. Maybe she shouldn't have said that. Insulting the people who saved him and made him who he is might not be the most prudent way to get him to open up. “Oh. . . nothing.”

“Ok,” he says through another yawn, which she can hear even though she’s not looking at him. And then, before she can think of another line of attack, he’s asleep again. Dammit.

Also, he still smells. She keeps the compartment hatch partway open, hoping for fresh air, but that’s in short supply with the two of them crammed together in a tiny ship surrounded by the endless vacuum of space.

* * *

“You smell,” Cara blurts out over breakfast.

He’s hunched over the navigator’s panel again, but even though he’s got his blanket pulled up around his ears, she can still see his cheek turn red. “I took a shower,” he mutters.

“You’re wearing the same clothes.”

“I only have one set. You recycled my other clothes.”

“They were ripped to shreds and soaked with blood. They were unrepairable.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do about it. I don’t have any other clothes.”

Cara leans over him and taps the navigation panel to zoom out. Based on their current trajectory and search pattern, Eovu is right in their path. Eovu with the perfect temperate climate and the best market in the quadrant. Miles of stalls, good prices, private security that keeps the peace but leaves you alone if you’re not causing problems. Anything you need, Eovu’s got it. She can get some new bootlaces to replace the ones that were torn up by thorns on Treos. And the food! Sticky-sweet Batuu-bons. Flatbread sandwiches dripping with spicy churri sauce, messy and almost impossible to eat, but so delicious they’re worth the effort. And clothes, of course. Of course they would be going there for clothes for Mando ha ha.

“We’re making a pit stop.”

“We don’t have time to stop. I have to stay on the trail.”

“It’ll only take a couple of hours. There’s a market on Eovu. It’s on the way, see?” She points over his shoulder at the panel. He flinches slightly when her arm brushes his shoulder, but he doesn’t pull away, so hey, progress.

“I can’t go to a market,” he says, shaking his head.

“Why not?”

His response is to gesture at his face like, _duh_. Of course, he doesn’t want to show his face. “You’re going to have to get used to the idea of people seeing your face, Din. It’s a normal thing that normal people do.”

“People are hunting me.”

“They’re hunting a Mandalorian, not you. No one even knows what you look like. You’re less conspicuous without the helmet than with it.”

He looks around, clearly searching for an excuse not to have to go through with this. “I don’t have any credits.”

“I have some. Don’t worry about it.”

“Oh good, then you go. I’ll stay with the ship.”

“Oh hell no, I’m not picking clothes for you. You have to pick them yourself.”

“I don’t care what they look like,” he says petulantly.

“You have to pick them yourself,” she repeats, and then adds, trying to sound casual, “You have to see if they’ll fit you.”

His head jerks and his eyes widen in alarm. _Perfect_. “I don’t want to try anything on,” he objects immediately.

Yes, excellent. A point she can give in on and still get what she wants. And he fell right into the trap. “All right, fine, you don’t have to try them on,” she concedes, trying to sound reluctant. He frowns at her suspiciously, but doesn’t argue further. Instead he sits back in the navigator seat, arms folded, and sulks while she punches in their new course. She’s right, she knows it. They’ll be fine. Eovu is right on the way. She can almost taste the flatbread sandwiches already. Maybe she’ll have one with grilled dewback steak. So farking good.


	7. Squeak

* * *

The whole way down, he glares silently at the viewscreen with his mouth set and eyebrows pulled together and down in the middle (not that she’s looking, of course). Well, she’s annoyed with him too. This shopping trip is definitely needed, it won’t take long, and she’s even paying for everything. What’s he got to be so grumpy about? Even after she sets the ship down neatly in a dirt parking spot, his expression doesn’t change, except. . . The eyebrows, she realizes, slant more down at the outside now than the inside. His mouth is straight, but his jaw muscle is jumping from chewing the inside of his cheek. His arms are tightly folded, but his fingernail has been picking at the scab around his wrist and now it’s bleeding. That sour expression isn’t sulking, it’s _anxiety_.

Trying to keep a lid on her annoyance, Cara says, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.” She goes down the to cabin and digs in the storage compartment under her bed until she comes up with her old rebel trooper hat—dark gray with a short bill. She took off the insignia when she left the corps, so it looks non-descript enough. Mando can hide under the bill, since he seems to like that sort of thing. She takes it back to the cockpit and hands it to him.

“Here, try that.”

“I don’t need a hat,” he grumbles, glaring at it. She just folds her arms and waits, and less than five seconds later, he puts it on and yanks the bill down low on his forehead. His hair curls out over his ears. Well, now she can’t see his eyes. Is the hat helping?

Cara crouches next to Mando’s seat and looks up into his troubled face. Nope, it’s not helping. His eyes are still broadcasting his anxiety loud and clear. “It’s ok to be afraid,” she says, as gently as she can muster.

“I’m not afraid,” he responds instantly. He’s such a liar. His denials are less effective when she can see his pale, sweaty face and the crease between his eyebrows. She wonders if he’s even aware of it.

She digs in her medikit at her waist and comes up with a bandage, which she holds up to show him. He just frowns at her, so she picks up his hand and turns it over to show him the rim of blood around the scab. “Like I said, it’s ok to be afraid,” she repeats as she sticks the bandage over the scab. “You’re gonna be ok, Din. I swear you will not die in this market today.”

“I know that,” he responds quickly. “I’m not afraid, I just think it’s a waste of time.”

“Sure, ok,” she says. She pats his knee and uses it to push herself to her feet. “Let’s go then. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can be done.”

“I have to get my blaster.”

She does not think that is a good idea, but one look at his face tells her this is not a fight she is going to win. Maybe she can convince him to take it down a notch. “Hmm. . . You don’t have a way to hide a blaster with those clothes, but I do. How about you take a knife and I’ll take a blaster?”

His eyes flicker for a second as he considers her logic. “Yeah, ok.”

Good. Much better. A guy with an obvious bulge in his pocket from a weapon would just attract the attention of the guards. “Just keep it put away. If the guards see it, they’ll think you’re looking for a fight.”

“I’m not looking for a fight,” he assures her, tucking his knife into a holster in his sleeve. That may be true, she thinks, but you’re not NOT looking for a fight either.

* * *

The first sensation that hits her when she opens the hatch is the smell. Fried meat, fruit pies, churri sauce, roasted fish. . . Cara’s mouth immediately starts watering. Maybe she could get Mando to eat a flatbread sandwich? She can’t quite imagine him with purple sauce dripping down his chin, especially in public.

On the way down the gangplank, the second sensation to hit is the heat. Eovu is usually the perfect temperature, with a light cooling breeze. Today, however, is a warm one. She’s glad she has on a sleeveless shirt. Mando, on the other hand, insisted on wearing his jacket, even though she warned him he wouldn’t need it.

The third sensation reaches them before they even get to the huge red gates, a cacophony of noise coming from the booths out front of the market. Vendors shouting, shoppers bargaining, colorful awnings flapping in the breeze, machinery clanking and whirring. Cara pushes her way through the crowds and into the fray. Stalls around them are hung with brightly colored bags and purses, mixed in with loud carnival games. Last time she was here, she beat the hammer toss and won fifty credits at one of the games, much to the delight of the crowd. Eovu is the best.

Cara has to turn her head almost completely to look at Mando, because he is determined to walk behind her left shoulder. She’s hoping to see that he’s enjoying this as much as she is, but his eyes are wary under the brim of the hat, darting from side to side scanning for threats. His fingers are curled into fists at his sides. Hmm. . . Definitely good she convinced him not to carry the blaster. They should probably start with the clothes so they can get that over with before he freaks out. Maybe it’ll be better inside the market itself, where the commerce is more controlled.

As she leads him through the metal front gates, a droid zips across their path. It only comes up to their knees, but Mando still jerks back, stepping out of the path until it’s out of sight. Oh right, droids. She forgot how much Mando hates them. Hopefully that won’t be too much of a problem.

Cara tugs on his arm ( _flinch_ ) to get him going again, then they have to walk past the food vendors in the courtyard to get to the men’s clothes. Cara makes note of the flatbread vendors so they can stop later. She can hear Mando breathing shallowly through his mouth. When she shoots him a look, he says under his breath, “It’s too much.”

Cara leans in so he can hear her over the din. “Too much what?”

His gaze darts around to the stalls and vendors shouting, and shoppers and droids clanking past. “. . . Too much. . . everything.”

Oh. The noise, the smells, the colors, the light, the physical contact—he’s used to the helmet regulating all of that for him. Without any attenuation, it must be sensory overload. Add that to the anxiety of showing his face in public, and it’s no wonder he’s stressed. Damn, she should’ve thought about that. It’s her fault he’s in this predicament, so she should try to fix it. Time to get him someplace calmer.

Cara reaches back and feels for his hand. As soon as she touches him, he flinches ( _oops_ ), and then immediately grabs her hand and hangs on. His palm is clammy and cool. “Keep focused on me,” she says over her shoulder.

“Ok.” His face is pale and there are beads of sweat on his upper lip.

“You all right?”

“Yes.” He does not look all right. He looks far from all right, but she decides not to argue with him. As long as he can _pretend_ to be all right for a few more minutes, that’s good enough.

“Ok good. It’ll get better once we get out of the food stalls. Just follow me.” She tows him through the crowd, weaving around clumps of people, until they reach the section where the clothing vendors are. The smell of the food isn’t as strong here, the light isn’t so bright, and it’s definitely cooler. It’s still crowded, but people aren’t pressed in on all sides. Better, right?

Cara stops and turns toward Mando. His face is still very serious and his eyes are wary, with a hint of Hopeful Tooka now (what the hell does that MEAN anyway??), but his face is somewhat less pale and sweaty. “Better?” she says, dropping his hand.

“I suppose,” he mutters through his teeth. Whatever. It looks like that’s the best she’s going to get, at least for the moment, so she’ll go with it. As long as he can hold it together long enough to pick some clothes, and for her to get a flatbread sandwich of course, they’ll be fine. He can fall apart as soon as they get back to the ship.

“Good. Ok, so. . .” she looks around, picks a likely booth and starts walking, “What colors do you like?”

“I don’t know.”

She glances at him, but he’s not looking at her, he’s watching the crowds. His face is set and his jaw muscle is jumping. Well, maybe it’s true that he doesn’t know what colors he likes. The blue shirt he’s currently wearing is the only color she’s ever seen on him that isn’t brown or gray.

“Blue?”

“I don’t care.” Mando’s eyes dart to follow a kid who runs out from one stall and disappears into another. A rather large Utapaun woman nearly bumps into him, and Cara sees his fingers twitching toward his sleeve. Looking around, she spots a guard watching them. He’s not coming their way, but he has obviously noticed them.

“Din, you’re attracting attention,” Cara mutters under her breath. She gives a subtle nod in the direction of the guard. Mando keeps his head still but his eyes follow her signal. “Try to relax.”

“That’s hard to do,” he mumbles back.

“At least I’m not making you try this shit on. Come on.” She leads him further into the stall where the guard can’t see them. Mando follows her, but he’s still scanning their surroundings. His face is hard. Anyone watching would think he was hostile, a real badass, especially with a faceful of half-healed bruises, and his hat pulled down nearly hiding his anxious eyes.

Cara picks up a pair of brightly colored pants, with patterns of geometric shapes and stripes. “How about these pants?”

“Uh-huh,” he says without looking. Cara rolls her eyes and puts them back. Even if he deserves to look like a rainbow threw up on him, she doesn’t deserve to have to look at that. Instead she picks up a bright pink shirt and holds it up so it’s in his line of sight.

“What about this shirt?”

This time he glances at it and pulls a face. “No.”

She snorts. “I’m going to just keep picking terrible things until you tell me what you want,” she says.

“Ok, fine.” He takes the pink t-shirt from her hand and picks up a black one instead. “Here,” he says, handing it to her.

She holds up the shirt next to Mando’s upper body to check the fit. Doesn’t look too bad. “Is this your size?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, good.” Cara puts the black shirt over her arm, then picks up several more in the same size but different colors. Red, brown, blue go over her arm. . .ooh, dark green—she holds it up and can’t help but appreciate how nice the color looks against his skin. That one goes over her arm too. Aaand she’s lost him again. He’s scanning for threats again, even though things are perfectly calm. Of course there’s the usual barely-controlled chaos of the market, but it’s all normal.

“Din? I’m going to buy these and then we’ll move on.”

“Ok.” He says without even looking. She leaves him standing there while she pays, then she heads out with the bag. Mando follows her out into the aisle, but his eyes are still darting around nervously. The guard is still there, and now a big droid, an older HK unit with flaking paint, is strutting down the aisle in their direction. As soon as Mando sees him, he catches Cara’s arm and pulls her around a corner. His grip on her arm is tight, and all the cords in his neck are standing out. Way to blend in, Mando. Cara spots another guard at the end of this aisle, and now he too is watching them with interest. Dammit.

Mando is still looking back the way they came, but Cara sees the next event coming right before it happens: Two customers arguing, one of them backs into a display of metal pans, which tumbles down with a loud CRASH. Mando whips around, knife suddenly in his hand.

“Put that away,” she hisses, hand on his chest. The guard is definitely looking their way now. Shit! Ok, there’s just one. If she can get Mando to put the knife away, they’ll be fine. Everything’ll be fine.

Another guard rounds the corner from the other direction, obviously coming to investigate the crash. Mando still hasn’t put the knife away. Ok, so maybe they can take both guards, but then what? There’s no way she wants to start something that will end with both of them in lock-up.

Cara flashes the guards a winning smile. As soon as they look away, she fists her fingers in Mando’s shirtfront and pushes him into a narrow gap between the booths, where she traps him against the wall with her body. His eyes widen and his breathing goes funny. It’s surprisingly easy to disarm him, she just grabs his wrist and his fingers go limp, allowing her to pluck the knife right from his hand. She tucks his knife into her inner holster next to hers, then leans in until her lips are almost against his ear.

“You have to relax,” she says, voice low and firm. “You’re drawing attention by being so jumpy.”

He blinks rapidly. “. . . Ok,” he squeaks. Did he just _squeak_? Is it weird that she thinks that’s sort of. . . cute?

Cara loosens her grip on his shirt but doesn’t take her hand off his chest. “Ok?”

His head bobs up and down in a jerky nod. She can feel his heart pounding hard under her hand. That’s. . . interesting.

“Are you ok?”

“Yeah.” He’s looking at her face now, and he’s got a definite hopeful Tooka expression going on. This is _very_ interesting.

“Ok. Good.” She backs off enough that he’s no longer pinned to the wall, but he doesn’t move. His breathing is still too fast and irregular. He looks a little dazed.

“You’re ok?” she confirms.

She gets a hard swallow and another jerky nod. “I’m ok. May I have my knife back please?”

“I think I’ll hang onto it for now. Just stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

“Ok.” Hmm, he’s just going to let her keep the knife without a fight? What’s going on with him?

“Ok, good. What can I do to make this easier for you? Besides let you go back to the ship and do it for you. I’m not doing that.”

“Um. . .” His eyes flick down to her hand, then up to her face, then back down to her hand again, then to the wall behind her shoulder. He licks his lip, squints, and says “I don’t know.”

“Well, how about if I. . . hold your hand?” she suggests. Just so he’ll feel more comfortable. Not for any other reason, of course. “Would that help?”

“Yeah, ok, that’s—that’s a good idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eovu's market is based on the Iron Market in Port au Prince, Haiti. I have been to Haiti, but I've never actually been to the market, so if I got some stuff wrong, consider it poetic license. A lot of it was damaged in the 2010 earthquake, but it's since been rebuilt. You should check out pictures online. It looks like a very cool place!


	8. Swimming with Sorrows

They go back to shopping, this time with his hand held securely in hers, and it’s working. . . ok. He still seems nervous, but not jumpy anymore. He’s looking at the clothes and even giving her feedback on whether he likes them or not. In just a few minutes, he’s approved a couple more shirts, two pairs of pants with multiple pockets, and another pair that looks soft and comfy (that he chose all on his own—unexpected). She adds a stack of socks and underwear to the pile without asking him, because she’s not planning to give him a choice on that one.

As she’s paying, she finds him eyeing a small rubber ball next to the cashier stand. It’s bright orange and sort of squishy, and the tag says “Pet chew toy”. Cara picks it up and sets it on the counter. “This one too,” she says casually, not looking at Mando.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the shopkeeper says as he adds it to the bag. He gives her the total and she pays, then heads out of the shop with Mando on her heels. This holding his hand thing is working out _very_ well, almost like a leash. And of course there’s the fact that it feels good too. His palm is dry and calloused, and his grip is firm.

The next stall has protein bars, which is good since they are almost out of the best-tasting ones. When she stops abruptly, Mando is so close that he steps on her heel. Maybe the hand leash works a little too well.

“What kind of protein bars do you like?” she asks Mando, who of course just shrugs. “Come on, how about. . .” she picks one up and reads the label “Mieloorun? Or. . . Crunchy wog clusters?”

“I don’t care.”

“Come on, help me out here.”

“Well, you like those Starblossom ones, right? Get some of those.”

Cara glances up at him in surprise. So him bringing her her favorite flavor wasn’t just a fluke? He really noticed what she liked? Huh. That’s kind of sweet, which is not an adjective she would’ve thought to apply to Mando. “Ok, Starblossom for me. Now you have to choose.”

“. . . Fine. This one.” He picks up an apparently random bar and hands it to her.

“Pickled coodler roe?” she says, lip curled. “Ugh.” She moves to put it back, but he stops her.

“The kid likes it,” he says simply. Well, in that case. . . She takes half a dozen more of the same flavor off the shelf.

“Ok, now what do YOU like? If you don’t pick one, I’m going to get you Jogan fruit.”

“Um. . . No thanks.” Aha, so he _doesn’t_ like Jogan fruit. NOBODY likes Jogan fruit. “. . .How about the honey kind?”

“Now we’re talking,” she exclaims. “Honey flavor it is.” She picks up a couple of honey flavored bars, then digs around in the basket until she thinks she has found them all. They probably have about forty bars in their pile now. Should hold them for a while. She pays and they go in the shopping bag with Mando’s clothes. He picks up the bag and slings it over his shoulder.

“I had it,” she says. Not that she’s complaining, since it was starting to get heavy. It’s been a while since she’s had a man carry something for her. It’s kind of nice.

“It’s all my stuff anyway,” he says, shrugging. “Least I can do is carry it.” He steps out of the stall, then stops and picks up a bottle from the next shop.

“What’s that?” she says.

“Aren’t you from Alderaan?”

“Yeah.”

“So is this.” He holds out the bottle for her to read the label. _Alderaanian Ruge Liqueur?!_ When she takes the bottle and examines the contents in the light, it glows like molten gold. This looks like the real thing. She waaaaants it.“Do you recognize that?” Mando prompts.

“It’s Ruge Liqueur from Alderaan. I didn’t know it existed anymore.”

As she’s examining the alcohol, she hears the shopkeeper, in a broad Crevasse City accent, having an argument with a customer, a big Gand wearing a methane breather. Her tone is exceedingly polite, which Cara knows from experience means she’s furious. The Gand doesn’t seem to realize that, which is exactly the point. After an increasingly heated exchange (at least on the Gand’s part), he exclaims, “Well then I’ll take my business elsewhere!”

“As you wish. May you be richly blessed.”

While the Gand is walking away, Cara starts to giggle. Mando, who is standing right beside her still clutching her hand, asks “What are you laughing about?”

“Did you hear their conversation?” Cara says in an undertone.

“Yes.”

“Well, she basically just told him to go fuck himself.”

“She did? Sounded to me like she wished him well.”

“Yeah. That’s the Alderaan way. I may not miss it, but I definitely understand it.”Cara turns the bottle upside down and discovers a price sticker. Seventy credits? That’s a little out of her price range. Reluctantly she puts the bottle back on the shelf.

“Don’t you want it?” Mando says, brow wrinkled.

“I think I’d better not. Let’s move on.” When he doesn’t follow right away, she gives his hand a little tug. “I need some new laces for my boots, because those thorns on Treos ripped them up, and then I’m hungry.”

“Ok.” He follows her out of the booth and down the aisle, where she finds the boot repair shop. She drops his hand so she can crouch down to check if the laces are long enough for her boot. By the time she stands back up, Mando is no longer in sight.

“Din?” she says urgently, scanning the crowd. “Din!” There’s no answer, and she doesn’t see him.

Oh shit, there’s a big Shistavanean slouching down the path her direction, his head doesn’t move but his eyes are searching the crowd. He’s definitely got a blaster in a holster under his jacket. Another holster in his boot. One hand at his hip, probably hiding a knife. She’s willing to bet he’s a bounty hunter. Shit, she just disarmed Mando; he’ll have no way to defend himself if this guy comes after him.

As she’s planning how she’s going to take this guy out without injuring any of the innocent shoppers around her, Mando suddenly reappears at her elbow, like he had been there the whole time. Cara grabs his hand and pulls him back into the shoe repair booth, where the cobbler looks up in surprise.

“Where did you go?” she hisses.

“What do you mean? I was right there.”

“I think that Shist is a hunter. He might be after us.”

Mando keeps his back to the aisle as the Shist walks by, then says quietly, “He’s not a bounty hunter. Last time I met him, I arrested him, but he doesn’t recognize me. Did you find your bootlaces?”

Cara has to pause a second to get her heart rate under control again. “Yes. Don’t scare me like that, ok? I didn’t know where you were.”

“I was right there. I can handle myself,” he says with an air of confidence that might be more persuasive if she hadn’t seen him practically have a panic attack a few minutes ago because c r o w d s.

“Uh-huh. Sure. Are we done shopping?”

“I was done before we started.”

She snorts. “Ok, let’s go get some food. I’m starving.” She pays, then starts walking without grabbing his hand. When they are about to plunge back into the crowds in the main courtyard, she feels his hand slide into hers again. Sure, buddy. You can handle yourself. Sure. _Right_.

They have lots of choices for meat at the sandwich place. She takes her time deciding, while Mando tries to pretend he’s invisible, but ultimately decides on the grilled dewback steak anyway. It’s her usual for a reason. And that reason is that it’s farking glorious. And she’s going to get ice cold fizzy drinks, and she’s going to sit at one of the long tables in the courtyard and eat the whole sandwich while it’s piping hot and it’s going to be GLORIOUS.

“What kind do you want?” she asks Mando. He shakes his head quickly. His eyes have that IT’S TOO MUCH look about them again, even though she’s got ahold of his sweaty hand.

“I don’t want one.”

Cara rolls her eyes, because there’s no way she’s not getting him a sandwich. If he won’t pick his own, then she’s getting him the roasted nerf, and she will eat half, because that one is also glorious.

By the time they get to the front of the line, Mando is practically hyperventilating. There’s no way he’s going to survive sitting and eating in a crowd like this. Reluctantly she decides they’ll have to get their sandwiches wrapped up to go, even though the meat will be cold and the flatbread will be soggy.

After the man hands her the sandwiches and drinks, she turns toward the metal gates. Well, that was fun (although Mando might disagree). Back to the hunt. “Come on, let’s go,” she says to Mando, who turns his head her way long enough to furrow his brow at her.

“I thought you were eating here.”

“No, _we_ will eat them on the ship,” she says, pulling him along on her hand leash.

As soon as they get back to the ship, Mando drops his bag and heads for the cockpit. Cara sets the food on the table and climbs the ladder behind him. Her goal is to get them off the ground and ready for autopilot within five minutes, so she can get back to her sandwich before it’s ruined—so _they_ can get back to _their_ sandwiches, that is, if she can convince Mando to eat. Four minutes later, they’ve escaped the atmosphere and are back in position to restart the search. Cara leaves Mando to reset the search pattern while she slides down the ladder to get ready for lunch, cuz she’s starving. Shopping always takes it out of her.

To her surprise, Mando follows her down. He’s got a datapad, which he tucks under one arm while he stows his boots and carries the shopping bag to his bunk.

While he sits crosslegged on his bunk and starts unpacking the bag, Cara lays out the sandwiches and fizzy drinks, one in front of each seat. “Ok, let’s eat,” she says, plopping down in her chair.

“You got me one?”

“Of course I did. You got roasted nerf and I got grilled dewback, but I’m willing to share,” she says magnanimously. _So generous. So kind._

“Oh.”

“So are you coming?”

“Yeah, ok. Here’s your bootlaces.” He holds them out, so she heaves herself out of her seat and puts the laces in the storage compartment beside her bed. When she gets back to the table, Mando is sitting in his seat, and on the table is a small bottle filled with golden liquid. Is that. . .?

She picks up the bottle and reads the label, then her gaze snaps to Mando, who has the hat brim pulled down low over his face. “Where did you get this?”

“From the stall on Eovu.”

“Did you steal it?”

“No! I—I told the shopkeeper you were from Alderaan and she gave it to me.” Even under the hat, Cara can see that his ears are turning red. She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously.

“She just. . . gave it to you?”

“Well. . . I may have told her you were a refugee who lost your entire family and the liqueur reminded you of home too much, which is why you left so fast.”

“So you lied!”

“I may be a liar, but I’m not a thief. Anyway, it’s just a small bottle. She’s not out much. And you are from Alderaan. And you did lose your family.”

“I didn’t have any family left to lose.”

“So you didn’t lose them when the planet blew up, but you did lose them, so it wasn’t entirely a lie,” Mando says uncomfortably. Cara decides to cut him a break.

“Well, thank you. Now let’s eat.” She opens the wrapper on her sandwich and takes a big bite, licking away the sauce that tries to escape out of the corner of her mouth, and it’s spicy and tender and oh so delicious, even if it’s more lukewarm now. She looks up and sees that Mando has _miracle of miracles_ unwrapped his sandwich and is trying to figure out how to pick it up without it falling apart. His head tipped down, but he’s watching her out of the corner of his eye, so she subtly repositions her hands to show him how she’s got the wrapper folded down to help hold her sandwich together. She keeps focused on her sandwich, pretending she isn’t watching him, and pretty soon he is carefully folding his wrapper to match hers. And then! HE TAKES A BITE.

She makes a show of focusing on her sandwich, and the next time she looks up, half his meal is gone, and he’s trying to discretely chug his soda, probably in response to the heat from the churri sauce. As he swallows, he glances at her. She doesn’t quite look away quickly enough, because as soon as he sees her looking, his eyes quickly flick away again. _Dammit, stop doing that!_

“You’ve got sauce on your nose,” he says, holding out a napkin without looking at her.

She takes the napkin and dabs at her nose. “Where, here?”

He glances at her to check. “No. Higher.”

“Here?”

“Um. . . No.”

“You get it,” she says, holding out the napkin. He takes it and wipes the bridge of her nose, then squishes the napkin in his hand. The corner of his mouth tugs back in what she hopes is amusement.

“You’re worse than the kid,” he says wryly.

“I’m a better conversationalist,” she shoots back. Uh-oh, the corner of his mouth has dropped, along with his eyes.

“We manage to communicate,” he says to the table. Aw shit, the baby porg eyes are back. He’s sad again and it’s her fault.

“Sorry. Hey, we survived today, so we should drink. Alcohol fixes everything, right?” She takes two drinking glasses out of the cupboard, pops open the bottle and pours a healthy shot into each glass. She holds one of the cups out to him. He looks at it but doesn’t take it. “Don’t tell me you don’t drink alcohol.”

“I do,”

“Then come on, Din, drink with me. Drown your sorrows.”

“My sorrows can swim.”

“Then drown _my_ sorrows with me.” She wags her eyebrows at him while he stares at the cup uncertainly. They’ve been holding hands all afternoon and suddenly he’s shy again.She could just set it down on the table and walk away, let him drink on his own, but she finds herself really wanting him to take it from her hand. It feels like an important step he should be ready for, so she keeps holding it out until he finally reaches out and takes it. Their fingers brush for a second before he pulls away. “There you go.” She raises her cup and waits for him to do the same. “To swimming with sorrows,” she says, clinking her cup against his.

She knocks back her shot quickly. Damn that’s good. It’s several seconds before he takes a quick sip of alcohol, swallows hard, and promptly chokes. Then he’s holding his wrist in front of his mouth and coughing helplessly.

“Shoot, I shoulda warned you. Here, have a drink of this.” She hands him his soda, and pats him on the back while he washes it down, until finally his coughing subsides. “Better?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she says, although she doesn’t quite believe him. She lifts the bottle and raises her eyebrows at him again until he holds his cup out and lets her refill it. “A little slower this time. You survived the market; I don’t want you to choke to death on Alderaanian alcohol.”

“To survival,” he says, holding up his cup. She searches his eyes for amusement, hoping he’s joking, but his face is dead serious. He honestly thought he might not survive a simple trip to the market. . . Maybe he wishes he hadn’t.

“To survival,” she repeats, holding up her cup. Well now she wishes the bottle were bigger because she is really far too sober for this shit.


	9. Dimples

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Cara finally finds out what happened to Mando. No graphic descriptions, but still. . .

* * *

While Mando showers and cleans up, Cara finishes her sandwich, wraps the rest of his up and puts it in the cooler, then lays back on the bed (their bed?) and tries not to imagine the kid dead and Mando dead. Which means, of course, that her traitorous brain keeps presenting her with increasingly gruesome pictures. Every time she chases one away, a worse one takes its place.

It takes Mando a long time in the shower, longer than she expects. By the time he comes out of the little bathroom, she is almost asleep, but she wakes up pretty quick as soon as she sees him. He’s got on the comfy pants he chose, and the dark green shirt she chose. She was right, that color definitely works well with his skin tone. The shirt is looser than she expected—maybe he’s lost some weight, which wouldn’t surprise her, given how little he’s been eating. The mustache is still there, but the patchy stubble on his cheeks is gone. It looks like he even tried to comb his hair, although the unruly curls still poke out around his ears. The effect is more than a little adorable.

He’s still got those farking baby porg eyes too.

He stands in the doorway of the bathroom and watches her out of the corner of his eye. Shy again, even though they’ve been sharing a bed for how many nights now? What’s he waiting for, an engraved invitation? Well, she’s happy to provide one. She sits up, slides over, and pats the empty space on the bed.

He sits, but the baby porg eyes don’t go away. She has to do something about that. She feels _responsible_.

“What are you thinking about?”

Mando chews on his lip. His thumbnail picks at a scab on his wrist. The bandage is gone; he must’ve taken it off when he was in the shower. Cara waits.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. Hoarse. Hesitant. “What are we going to do. . . if we find them?”

“ _When_ we find them,” Cara corrects him, hoping that will fix those sad eyes. It doesn’t.

“Ok, when.” He accepts her correction, but the original question hangs in the air. He’s actually asking that. Asking her what they should do. She didn’t think there was any question.

“Well, I guess I assumed we were going to kill ‘em,” she says, keeping her tone light. The baby porg eyes meet hers, still from the side, still through his lashes.

“What if—what if they hurt the kid?”

The thought flashes back into her mind, that if they lose the kid, she’ll lose Mando too. She has to do something about those sad eyes.

“Then I guess we’re gonna. . . super kill ‘em,” she quips. His head comes up, his eyes meet hers, and then, and then. . . his mouth pulls up and back into a surprised grin. Not that little half-smile she got on Treos, this is a full grin, complete with (gasp) dimples and eye crinkles and oh gods it’s all kinds of adorable and she never wants it to go away.

Of course, it does go away, almost immediately, and she instantly misses it. Cara carefully picks up his hand and brushes her fingers over the yellowing bruises around his wrist.. “Actually, I was ready to super kill ‘em anyway, for hurting you,” she says softly. He doesn’t say anything, but she realizes she can feel his pulse jumping fast under the skin. He’s finally looking at her full on, and there’s no more baby porg eyes. Now his gaze is very open, and vulnerable. Not hopeful Tooka anymore (although she has a guess about what that means now), instead his eyes are filled with so much longing it makes her stomach hurt. Also, he’s not breathing. Yeah, nope, not at all.

Moving slowly, Cara lifts his hand and kisses a pinkish scar on the inside of his wrist. Now his lips part and he draws in a jerky breath.

She lays a hand against his bruised cheek, and gets a little flinch. Too much? Maybe, but before she can pull away, he reaches up and catches her hand, leans into her touch. His lips are still parted, just a little, and his breathing is shaky. She can still feel his pulse pounding, and now her heart is pounding too. Well, here goes nothing. . .

She leans in and kisses him, lightly, so he can get out of it if he wants to, but it’s immediately obvious that he doesn’t want to stop, because he responds eagerly, almost desperately. It’s also obvious, also immediately, that he has _absolutely no experience with this whatsoever_.

Uh-oh.

Cara breaks the kiss and sits back, breathing hard herself now. His eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“Did I—do something wrong?”

“. . . Din, have you ever done this before?”

“Um. . . yes?”

Why does he not sound confident about that answer? “You haven’t, have you? There’s no judgment,” she reassures him quickly, cuz the baby porg eyes are back, “it would just be nice to know if this is your first time.”

“It’s not!” he protests, but it kind of sounds like a lie. Cara narrows her eyes at him suspiciously. He’s been wearing a helmet and hasn’t taken it off around another person since he was at least a teenager. When would he have had the opportunity to kiss anyone, let alone go any further?

“When? With your helmet on?”

“N—no. I mean—Not—After she took off the helmet. . . Xi’an—she—“ He breaks off, breathing hard. The open and vulnerable look is gone. Now he’s twisting his hands in his lap and watching her out of the corner of his eye again.

“Hold up, you mean you were getting it on with her after she took off your helmet? Weren’t you. . . tied up?”

His eyes scrunch up, mouth twisting in distress. “It wasn’t exactly—she didn’t exactly ask me. She just—she did what she wanted. I couldn’t—I didn’t—I—I—“

The realization of what he’s actually saying hits Cara like a bucket of ice water across the face. Oh, gods, no wonder he’s so jumpy. There’s no way in hell she’s going to add to that trauma by starting anything physical with him right now. “Ok, stop. We aren’t doing this.”

  
“What? Why—?”

Even though Cara is furious (Xi’an—it’s good to remember the name of the person whose throat you are going to slit), she keeps her voice even. She’s mad, but she’s not mad at _him_. “Din, that wasn’t sex.”

“Yes it was!” he protests. “I mean, I think that’s—Yes it was!”

“No, that’s not sex, that’s rape.”

His eyes go huge with horror, and then he starts shaking his head. “What?? No! I didn’t—I wouldn’t—“

Oh gods, he has it farking backwards again. She softens her voice even more and says, “No, honey, I don’t mean you raped her, I mean she raped you.”

Mando’s eyebrows draw together like he doesn’t understand, but his breathing has gone ragged and his lower lip looks a bit wobbly. The skin around his eyes is turning red and blotchy. He’s definitely about to cry. “It’s not—I couldn’t get her to stop! I tried, but—“

“Din. . . it’s not your fault,” Cara says gently. “I’m not blaming you.”

Yeah, his eyes are red and watery, and his chin is wrinkled up. Shit. She just made him cry. She feels like a heel, but there’s no way she’s going to touch him until he gets this figured out.

“But I’m not going to add to the trauma.”

“There’s no trauma!”

“Din, you’re crying,” she points out. “Obviously there’s trauma.” This doesn’t help. His face scrunches up. As the tears overflow, he scrubs at his face, then presses the heel of his hand to his eye socket, pushing hard enough that it must hurt.

“I’m not saying never, ok?” she says, trying to get him to look at her. That doesn’t go well. “I’m saying you have to deal with this trauma first and then we’ll talk. Ok?”

There is a long pause before he drags in a hitched breath. “. . . Yeah. Ok.” He’s got his hand over his face now. Hiding again, dammit.

“You’re hiding again.”

“No I’m not.”

“You have your literal whole hand over your literal whole face.”

That gets her a sniffle and a shaky exhale that’s halfway between a chuckle and a sob. “Sorry,” he says, but doesn’t take his hand down. Like maybe she’s not gonna figure out he’s still crying if she can’t see his face.

“You ok?”

“. . . Yeah. Well, no but—yeah.”

Cara sighs. “Yeah. Me too. Ok,” she says, patting his knee. He flinches, because of course he does. Dammit. That little flinch, that he kept telling her to ignore, was a clue staring her right in the face. “Right. Well then. . . Which bed do you want?”

The hand does not come down, although he’s obviously wiping his face. “. . . I’ll take the floor.”

Cara grimaces. This again? Why?? “There’s another bed,” she points out reasonably, “or if you want this one, I’ll take that one.”

“I prefer the floor,” he insists.

“Why?”

He rubs his palm across his eyes again, then finally drops his hand. His face is damp but he’s not actually crying anymore, thankfully. “I can sleep wherever I want, right? As long as it’s not. . . with you.”

Yeah, she’s not going to win this one. Whatever. “Ok, fine. Sure, wherever you want. The floor it is.”

He gathers his blanket and his pillow. “I’ll try to keep the crying to a minimum,” he says as he arranges them on the floor.

Cara can’t help but laugh. Judging by the watery half-smile he flashes at her, that was the reaction he wanted. “Yeah, sure. It’s ok to cry, you know.”

“You said—“

“It’s part of healing.”

“I don’t think so.”

She rolls her eyes and gives up, at least for now. “Goodnight, Din,” she says as she closes her compartment. As if she thinks she actually going to be able to sleep after all that.

* * *

Cara isn’t disturbed by any nightmares from Mando for the rest of the night. She thinks probably that means he isn’t sleeping either, but she doesn’t open her compartment to check.

She finally catches a few Z’s, and when she wakes up, she finds Mando’s pillow scrunched up in the corner by the table. The man himself and his blanket are both gone, so she makes herself a cup of coffee and climbs the three steps to the cockpit, where she finds him wrapped in his blanket, hunched over the navigation console like usual.

He greets her, but doesn’t say anything else. She can’t think of anything to say either, so she just sits and alternates between playing a game on her datapad and staring at his curl. He hasn’t moved in over an hour. Is he asleep? Or is he dead? Maybe she should check for a pulse.

She’s trying to think of how to talk to him about last night, when he suddenly speaks. She nearly jumps out of her skin.

“What do I have to do to convince you?”

“Convince me of what?”

“That I’m not traumatized.”

_Buddy, you are so traumatized. There’s no possible way to convince me you’re not._ “Well, for starters, you can stop claiming you’re not traumatized.”

His head half-turns toward her, eyebrows wrinkled in confusion. “That makes no farking sense.”

“Din, you won’t even look at me. You barely eat. You have nightmares every night and wake up crying—“

“Not the last few nights,” he interrupts her.

“True, but only because I was there. You don’t want to talk about what happened. You jump whenever I touch you.That’s trauma. It takes time to recover; you can’t rush it.”

He doesn’t say anything. His eyebrows are still pulled down, and she can see that the corner of his mouth is pulled down too.

“It helps to talk about it,” she prompts.

“I have no idea what to say. Talking about _feelings_ isn’t exactly part of my skillset.”

“It can be learned.”

“How?”

Cara considers what to tell him here, since this isn’t exactly her strong suit either. She decides to start with an easy one. “Well, for starters, why do you keep sleeping on the floor?”

His head turns back toward the navigation console as he pulls the blanket up higher on his neck, covering the curl. “I can’t sleep in the bed,” he mutters.

“Why not?”

“I just—I _can’t_.”

Cara sighs. “When you can tell me why, then we’ll talk.”

His response is a grunt, which she supposes is as good as she’s going to get, so she goes down and fetches the second half of his sandwich and a protein bar for herself. When she sets the sandwich beside him, he eyes it. After she has sat back down and unwrapped her bar, he says, “Thank you,” mostly into the blanket, but doesn’t move to eat it.

She lasts about another hour in the cockpit with Mr. Grumpy Eyebrows (basically the only part of his face she can see) before she decides her time would be better spent in the cabin cleaning and doing safety checks. So she tosses Mando’s pillow and dufflebag onto his bed, extricates the sock hiding under the table, and double-checks the controls for the airlock, and coolant system, and recyclers, and air circulation system. Several hours later, she has about run out of busy-work when she turns around and finds Mando sitting on the ladder to the cockpit watching her, actually watching, not his usual glancing through his eyelashes shit. Of course, as soon as she catches him, his gaze hits the floor and his ears turn scarlet.

She’s really trying to keep a straight face, but it’s hard. So hard. He’d better appreciate how hard she’s working on his behalf. “Hey,” she says breezily.

“Hey.”

“Everything ok?”

“Yes. Well, not really, but—yes.”

“Yeah, same.” She waits for him to say more, but he just sits there boring holes into the deckplates with his eyes. “What’s up?”

“I’m afraid,” he blurts out.

“. . .Of what?”

He gestures around, maybe at the ship, maybe at the universe as a whole. “Everything.”

Whoa. “Oooookay.”

“You said to talk about my feelings. I’m talking about my feelings!”

_Ok, slow down_. Cara takes a deep breath and starts over. “I’m sorry. I want to try this again. Let’s sit down, ok?” She sits on her bed and gestures him over. “Come sit with me and let’s try again. I want to hear what you have to say.”

He doesn’t look at her, but he does come and sit on the bed next to her, both of their feet dangling off the side like kids. He starts picking at what’s left of the scab around his wrist. She is afraid she has accidentally put the cork back in the bottle, but finally he starts talking. “You asked. . . You asked why I couldn’t sleep in the bed. I’m afraid.”

He’s frowning down at his hands, eyebrows pulled together in discomfort. Cara wants to take his hand, but that flinch. . .So she silently waits for him to continue.

“I’m afraid with the door open, because someone might attack me, and I’m afraid with the door closed, because I don’t know what’s out there. And yes, I know that’s ridiculous. I can’t help it.”

So that explains why he can’t sleep in the bed. Cara is about to tell him it’s not ridiculous, but he keeps talking. “I’m afraid to—to. . . to be touched, but with you. . .” He takes a deep breath and says in a rush, “I—I _want_ you to touch me. I feel like—like I _need_ it. I don’t want to need it but I can’t help that either.”

He scowls at a bit of scab that has come loose. “It’s distressing,” he says, eyebrows pinched together, chin wrinkled up. Cara finds her eyebrows wrinkle up in sympathy with him. He glances up at her face, then quickly back down. “I told you I’m bad at this.”

“Sorry about my face,” Cara says quickly, trying to rearrange her eyebrows into a more encouraging shape. “I’m bad at this too. Um. . . Can I hold your hand?”

“Yes,” he answers without hesitation, so she slides her hand into his. He doesn’t flinch this time, probably because he knew it was coming. She’ll have to remember that.

“Tell me more.”

There is a long moment where he stares at their joined hands. His thumb is carefully tracing her knuckles, his touch whisper-light. His mouth opens and closes several times before he speaks. “I remember. . . the last thing my mother did before she died was kiss me. I don’t remember much else, but I do remember that. She’s the last person who kissed me until—until Xi’an did.”

There’s lots Cara wants to say to him about that, but she doesn’t want to interrupt him now that he’s on a roll, so she just silently squeezes his hand. “The Mandalorians saved me. It’s all I ever wanted to be. Xi’an took that away from me, but when she touched me, I couldn't—I—“ He stops himself and shakes his head. His other hand comes up like he’s scratching his nose, and then stays covering his face. He’s not just doing his usual hiding this time. Now his fingers are shaking. His palm in hers has gone sweaty, and there is a flush creeping up his neck and over his ears. “I don’t think—I don’t know if I can—“

He’s definitely ashamed of something, and Cara thinks she knows what it is. “Let me guess—you couldn’t control how your body responded.”

He says nothing, but based on his physical response, she totally nailed that one. His shoulders curl in and his chest jerks in a ragged sob. His grip on her hand, which had been light, tightens.

“Dammit,” he chokes out as he swipes at his face with the heel of his hand. “Sorry.”

“Hey,” she says, stroking her thumb over the back of his hand, “you don’t need to apologize for showing how you feel. It’s ok to be human, remember?”

“. . . Yeah.”

“It’s totally normal, you know,” she says, keeping her voice neutral, even though her eyes are burning. “It’s mostly automatic, nothing you would be expected to be able to control.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he’s gone still, apparently listening from under his hand. Cara wants to touch his hair, wrap him up in her arms, kiss the tears away, but that would be a very bad idea right now. She promised him she wouldn’t touch him until he dealt with the trauma, and she’s not going to break that promise and cause more trauma.

“So that means it wasn’t your fault.”

His only response is another stifled sob. His jaw muscle is jumping from chewing the inside of his cheek again. “Din? Do you believe me?”

There’s a bit too long of a pause before he nods. He still won’t look at her. “It’s not your fault,” she repeats. This gets her another jerky nod.

“Din, please—look at me. Please.” She waits, and the hand finally comes away from his face. The skin around his eyes is red and blotchy, and his face is smeared with damp streaks. His head is tipped forward still, but he meets her gaze out of the corner of his eye. “You did nothing wrong,” she says firmly, “It’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, I know.”

She’s not convinced he actually believes her, but what is she supposed to do? Her usual tactic of holding her opponent down until they yield doesn’t really apply here. She’s tired and ready to table this discussion, at least for now. “All right. Thanks for sharing, Din. I’m glad you decided to talk to me. We’ll have to do this again sometime.”

“. . . Ok.”

He continues to sit on her bed with his hand in hers. She’s tired. So tired, but he’s sort of in her way to go to sleep. She waits in case he has something else he wants to tell her, but apparently not because he’s just sitting there. After a minute, she squeezes his hand and releases it.

“Ok, great. Well, good night.”

“Ok,” he says, but he doesn’t farking _move_. She makes a little shooing motion with her hands, and he seems to remember that he’s not sleeping on her bed anymore. “Yeah, ok. Good night.” He slides off the bed onto the floor, and she hits the controls to close her compartment. Not to shut him out, although that’s the effect of course, but to have a few minutes to collect her thoughts. She’s trying to puzzle her way through the familiar intersection of trauma, shame, and guilt when sleep slams her upside the head and knocks her right out.


	10. Split kicks

* * *

Cara doesn’t know how long she’s been out when her sleep is disturbed by a beeping noise. Mando screaming again? Nope, sounds electronic. Proximity alert? Nope, that’s the computer notifying them that it’s got another hit. As she’s trying to get untangled from her blanket, she hears a scuffling noise from nearby, Mando’s feet pounding on the rungs of the ladder, and then a loud BONK followed by a muffled “Ow!” She’s pretty sure he just bumped his head on the too-low ceiling of the cockpit.

Cara grabs a couple of protein bars and follows a little more slowly. When she gets up to the cockpit, Mando is sitting in the navigation seat leaning over the panel. He’s rubbing his head with one hand, while his other hand is rapidly entering data into the console. He doesn’t seem to notice her arrival until she drops into the pilot seat. Then his head jerks up in surprise, like maybe he isn’t sure who’s next to him, like they aren’t the only two people in this little bubble in the vast ocean of space.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.” His knee bounces up and down and his finger taps on the display in rhythm. There’s a new lump of a bruise darkening in the middle of his forehead.

“Is your head ok?”

“Yes.”

“Got another data point?”

“No.”

“No? I thought I heard—“

He meets her eye and breaks out into that adorable grin again, complete with dimples and TEETH this time. “I got TWO data points!”

“You did?! That’s great! So. . . do we need one more?”

“Not this time. Nothing more to narrow down. I know what hyperspace lane they used. We can be to the entrance in about fifteen hours.”

“Really? And do you know where they exited?”

“Yes. Check your console.”

She looks down and finds the course laid out for her. Destination: Rathirria, a tiny moon in the Alzoc system. Fifteen hours on this end, about eight minutes in hyperspace, then two days on the other end. Three more days and they might have the kid back. _Might_.

“Got it.” she says as she lays it in. “Engaging now.” She can hear Mando’s knee bouncing from nervous excitement. So she’s got another three days of that to look forward to. Awesome.

“So it looks like we have time for breakfast,” she says, holding out a honey flavored protein bar. His knee stops bouncing while he stares at it. Glitching out again. Of course he’s going to turn her down. Why does she even bother?

“I’m not—“ He stops, takes a quick breath and huffs it out, then tries again. “Actually, yes, I’m hungry. Thanks.” He holds up his hand. She so surprised it takes a second for her to respond. “Did I do that right?” he asks.

“Yes, actually, you did,” she says, tossing the bar to him. Grinning, he opens it and takes a bite.

“I think I”m getting the hang of this,” he says while chewing.

“Very good. Next lesson, how to chew with your mouth closed.”

Mouth still full, he says, “Oh. Sorry. Manners aren’t really something you have to worry about when you eat alone all the time.”

So she’s got three days of THAT to look forward to also. It’s gonna be great.

* * *

There’s still plenty of time left before they have to jump to hyperspace, so Cara decides to put herself through her exercise routine. Mando, luckily, stays in the cockpit, because the cabin isn’t really big enough for two when one of them is practicing split kicks.

When she’s done, she forces herself to sit cross-legged on the floor and “center herself”, as her squad leader used to call it. Torture, she calls it, but she finds that it does help her control her restlessness, so she does it, begrudgingly.

She’s been sitting for less than a minute when Mando comes out of the cockpit and sits on the ladder. Cara cracks open an eye.

“What’s up?” she says.

He shrugs. His foot is bouncing on the lowest rung of the ladder, and his jaw muscle is jumping from chewing the inside of his cheek.

“You ok?”

“Yes,” he lies. Dude is so obviously a nervous wreck.

“Wanna sit with me?”

He doesn’t say anything, so she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, he is sitting cross-legged on the floor facing her. He’s very still, but his jaw muscle is still twitching, and his fingers drum anxiously on his knee. Cara waits, expecting he’s got something more to say about his feelings.

“I don’t want the kid to kill anyone.”

That’s not what she was expecting him to say at all, but ok. “. . . I don’t want him to kill anyone either,” is all she can think of to say. “Has he killed someone before?”

“Burg.”

“I don’t know Burg.”

“The big red guy. When you found me. The dead man. The kid killed him trying to. . . trying to protect me.”

Cara waits for him to continue the story, but he just sits and silently chews his cheek. “Can you tell me what happened?” she prompts.

“I don’t know if I—I don’t think I can tell it right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—I’ve been trying to think about how to tell the story, and I keep getting it mixed up. I don’t know if I can tell the whole thing.”

Cara takes a second to appreciate the fact that he’s been thinking about how to tell her something. That he’s trying. That’s good, right? Evidence that he’s working through the trauma instead of denying it. “Well. . .If you try, I can help you,” she suggests.

“Um. Ok. . . .While Xi’an” (the woman whose neck I am going to break, Cara reminds herself) “was—while she—“ Mando breaks off and clears his throat. His eyes dart around the cabin like he’s looking for the exit.

“I already know that part, so you can skip it if you want.”

“. . . Ok, thank you. Anyway, Qin—he’s her brother—he took the kid in the other room. Mayfeld and Burg—um—“ He clears his throat again and rubs his hands on his thighs. He looks like he’s about to jump out of his skin.

“Din, can I hold your hand?”

“Yes,” he agrees immediately, holding out his hand like a blind man looking for a guide. She’s not sure she’s up for the title of “emotional guide”, (sort of the blind leading the blind there) but she can at least hold his hand. She scoots a little closer and slides her hand into his. His palm is sweaty.

“Keep going, I’m listening. What about Mayfeld and Burg?”

“Um. . . I was trying to be quiet so the kid wouldn’t get upset. So. . . um. . .when she was—was done, she told Burg. . .” He pauses and takes a shaky breath. “She told Burg—she said it was his turn.”

Cara clamps down firmly on the swear words that are trying to spill out of her mouth right now. Instead she squeezes Mando’s hand and tries to look encouraging. He doesn’t look encouraged, but he does keep going.

“He came at me, and I—I spat blood in his face. So he got mad and went after me with the whip instead. I couldn’t help making noise. Then the kid came in to see what was going on, and he—.”

Mando’s grip on her hand tightens. His jaw is clenched and his gaze is _intense_. The skin around his eyes is blotchy red and wrinkled up—maybe he’s trying to hold back tears. “He started screaming, and his face. . . I don’t know, it was. . . terrifying. Then it was like a hurricane blowing through, swirling everything around, and Burg flew up into the air. I was yelling ‘No No!’ because I didn’t want him to kill someone, but I couldn’t stop him. Nothing could stop him. Then after Burg fell back down dead, the kid toppled over like he was dead too.”

“Did he get up again?”

“No. His eyes were sunken in and his face was gray. Qin checked if he was alive, and then they took him away from me.”

“I’m sorry, Din.”

Mando shakes his head. “He’s just a kid, he didn’t need that on his conscience. I was afraid it would mess him up. I still remember the first person I killed.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“What was yours?”

Cara doesn’t even have to think about it. Almost every night that scene replays in her head as she’s falling asleep. “I was still a plebe. Fellow shock trooper went rogue, attacked innocent villagers. I had to take him down. . . He was my friend, or at least I thought he was.”

“How did you feel?”

“Numb, I guess. It didn’t really hit me until I got back to base and was washing his blood out of my hair. I just stared at it. I thought I must have cut my head. I couldn’t make the connection between shooting Daveth and the blood in my hair. My squad leader came in and tried to talk to me. She said I had saved a lot of lives and I should be proud of myself.”

“Were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Proud of yourself.”

“No. I felt like I had screwed up and everything was all wrong and would never be right again.”

“Was it?” Mando asks quietly. “Was it ever all right again?”

“Eventually, I suppose. I still think about it all the time, but I kept telling myself I did what I had to do.”

“Did that work?”

“Well, not entirely, but I don’t feel guilty about it anymore. Hey wait, aren’t we supposed to be talking about YOUR feelings.”

“I’m trying, but I don’t know how.”

“Tell me about your first kill,” Cara says.

“My first mission. I was fifteen, still a trainee. We ran into a squad of stormtroopers, maybe like thirty of them. There were only five of us. . . I don’t know how much to tell.”

“As much as you want.”

“. . . So we were. . . There was an explosion, and . . . well, it ended up with close combat. A stormtrooper had me—he cut off from my squad. If I hadn’t killed him, I know he would’ve killed me. I stabbed him between the plates of armor.” Mando stares at the floor, eyebrows pulled down like he’s thinking hard. After a hard swallow, he continues. “. . . I had trained on using a knife, but I’d never actually stabbed a real person before. It slid in so easy, like cutting butter. As he fell, his. . . his helmet came off and I could see his face. He wasn’t much older than I was. There was blood coming out of his mouth. He reached out to me, not like he wanted to hurt me, more like he wanted me to help him. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So what did you do?”

“Nothing. I sat there and watched him die. My buir—that’s my Mandalorian father who raised me—he said I wasn’t an ad’ika anymore—not a child, I was a man. But I didn’t feel like a man. . . Later that night I went out by myself and cried until I threw up. I didn’t want that for the kid. He’s just a little kid. If he kills people, it’ll mess him up. I don’t want him to be—”

“Dont want him to be what?”

Mando chews his lip. He squints, eyebrows pulled down and together. “I don’t want him to be like me,” he says to the floor. His voice is even, but it breaks on the last word, and Cara’s heart breaks with it.

“Din, can I. . . hug you?”

His eyes come up to meet hers. His mouth twists and his chin wrinkles as he nods, jerkily. Cara reaches out, slowly so he can read her intentions, and wraps her arms around his hunched shoulders. He doesn’t flinch, but she can feel all his muscles tight and trembling. Her hand finds its way to the curl at the back of his neck, and as she lets it slip through her fingers, back and forth, he tentatively slides his arms around her waist and relaxes into her embrace. “He’ll be like the good that he sees in you,” she says into his ear. “You love him, and that’ll be enough.”

* * *

Mando is so farking restless that Cara finally decides to give him a job to do. One of her vambraces is busted (she has NO IDEA how that happened). Even before she can finish asking, “Will you fix it for me?” he takes the pieces out of her hand and starts rummaging through her tools. She retreats to the cockpit to stay out of his way, and ends up getting two hours of peace out of the deal. She’s just finishing her coffee when he calls her down. Sliding down the ladder, she finds him sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by tools, her newly repaired vambrace in his hands.

“Sit down,” he says, gesturing to the only clear space on the floor in front of him.

“Ok.” She sits carefully, to avoid landing on the pointy end of a tool.

“Hold out your arm.”

She does, and he painstakingly fits the vambrace, making small adjustments, until it molds to her forearm better than it ever did.

“Is that ok?” he asks, finally looking up.

“It’s more than ok. In fact, it was ok about ten adjustments ago. Feels great.”

“Good. The punch holes in the strap were in the wrong place.”

“I’ve noticed that. It’s always either too tight or too loose.”

He nods. “I punched another hole so it will fit better. I can do the other one too if you like.”

“Sure.” Look at him being all useful and all. Maybe she’ll keep him around.

“How about your pauldrons?”

“Sure, them too. Why not.” She just bought herself SIX hours of peace and quiet. And her armor will get all fixed up and cleaned out of the deal. It’s a win-win situation, and she’s the one doing all the winning.

* * *

Cara has finished all the levels of her game; composed and deleted five messages to Karga telling him what the hell she’s doing, finally sending him a breezy little “Busy with a side job, I’ll check in soon” so he knows she’s alive at least; and rebraided her hair twice before it’s time to get the bag of dried berries to chew on during the hyperspace jump. She goes down to the cabin to find every. single. piece of her armor spread out on the floor, and Mando so focused on his cleaning rag that he doesn’t even look up when she stands right in front of him.

“Hey, time for hyperspace,” she says.

“Ok, almost done.”

“Done with what?” she says, looking around at the—well, it’s not a mess, call it organized chaos—going on around the cabin.

He gestures around like it’s obvious, then goes back to work, so Cara reaches down to pick up her neckguard, which no longer has a bent endpiece. Mando says, “Careful, the paint’s not dry.”

Cara looks closer. The paint on her vambraces has been touched up too. The ding on her right pauldron has been buffed out. The frayed stitching on her belt has been repaired and the buckle sewn in more securely. He even fixed the hole in the knee of her leggings.

“These look great, Din,” she says, and he flashes a shy smile while his cheeks turn pink.

Well, shit. Maybe a bored, restless Mando isn’t such a bad thing after all.

* * *


	11. Yada yada yada

* * *

Space travel is weird. Hours and hours of boring nothing, then eight minutes of the most intense ride of your life, followed by hours and hours of nothing again.

On the plus side, she offers Mando a dried berry and he eats it! On the minus side, he then proceeds to polish off the bag in about two minutes flat. At least he’s trying to chew with his mouth closed this time, so that goes in the plus column. Another plus: when they come out of hyperspace, he goes back down to the cabin and carefully packs up all of her armor again, very neatly in the bag in the order that she would need to put it on. Another minus: he leaves the bag in the middle of the farking cabin floor. So, you win some, you lose some. Cara stows the bag in the empty spot in one of her newly organized cupboards and tries not to think about the next time she’ll have to put it on.

So. . . everything’s clean, every system has been checked and double-checked, her armor is ready for action, both of them have been fed and showered, message to Karga has been sent. . . What next? From the cabin, Cara can hear Mando’s foot bouncing against the floor of the cockpit. How many more hours of this?

She stretches out on her bed with her datapad and pulls up her long-abandoned book. It’s been so long that she’s lost the plot and has to back up two chapters to remember who the characters are. She’s been reading for less than ten minutes before Mando appears on the ladder like magic.

“Hey,” she says, looking up from her book.

He apparently takes that as an invitation because he slides the rest of the way down the ladder and goes to the little sink, where he fills up two bottles of water. Cara sits up and accepts the bottle he hands to her. Then he stands there holding his bottle.

“Got more feelings to discuss?”

He shrugs but doesn’t say anything, so Cara scoots over and pats the bed next to her. “Have a seat.”

He sits, half-turned toward her, one foot folded up underneath himself on the bed. Ok, eye contact. That’s nice. “I wanted to thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“I don’t know if I can say this right, but I’ll try.”

“I’m listening.”

“Ok.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, then starts speaking in a quiet voice that she has to lean in to hear properly. “I’ve been alone for a long time. My Buir was the only one who really knew me, the only one who could see my face, and he died in battle when I was sixteen. I was old enough to be on my own so I never joined another clan. I decided to go it alone. I never thought that was a problem. I did my job and I got paid and that kept me going until I got my next job. I never thought I could. . . love anyone. And then the kid came along. He saved my life when i was his enemy. He didn’t see me as his enemy, he just. . . loved me, before he even knew me.” Mando’s voice breaks, and he pauses to clear his throat. “I discovered I needed that. He saved me, so I saved him back. Once he was mine, I could take off my helmet around him. The first time he saw my face, you know what he did?”

Cara shakes her head. These are the most words she has heard Mando say at one time, ever. She is afraid to speak and possibly break the spell.

“He climbed up on my lap and started touching me all over my head and face, and then he wrapped his arms around my neck and hugged me. No one had touched me in a long time. I started. . . bawling like a baby.” The corner of Mando’s mouth tugs back in a half-grin. “I think I really confused him. . . I love him so much it feels like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. It hurts like hell, and it’s the best thing ever, all at the same time. I never thought loving someone could be like that.”

Mando looks at her full-on, and his eyes are very open and vulnerable again, like dark pools that she wants to fall into. “Can I hold your hand?” he asks. Cara nods dumbly. He picks up her hand and traces her fingers with his thumb. She realizes this is the first time he’s initiated physical contact. It’s _very_ nice. “And now I have two people to love,” he says, voice low and soft.

Yeah, Cara’s gone. Completely gone. She’s never had a man tell her he loved her before. Not one. Not even her own father, who walked out the door when she was seven. Certainly none of her boyfriends, including one she almost married. She knows it’s a bad idea, but she’s going to kiss him. Just a kiss, no further. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? . . As she starts to lean in for the kiss, he pats her hand and says, “Well, good night.”

Wait a minute, he’s starting to stand up! Cara tightens her grip on his hand and gives it a little tug. “Hey, come back here.”

He sits back down, with a wry grin on his face. “What?”

“Did you mean that?”

“Mean what?”

“That you. . . love me?”

He blinks and his eyebrows pull together like he doesn’t understand. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

“I’d really like to kiss you right now.”

“. . . I’d like that too.”

“Can I touch your face?”

“Yes.”

She lays her hand against his cheek, and this time he doesn’t flinch. He turns his head a little and presses his lips to her palm. Cara feels like she’s going to explode.

“Can I kiss you?”

“I already said yes to that.”

Cara snorts. “Just making sure.” She closes the distance between them and kisses him, lightly at first, and then deeper as he responds eagerly. Breathless, she says against his lips, “Can I put my hand on your shoulder?”

“Yes. You don’t have to ask me. You can just tell me what you’re going to do. Anything you want, the answer is going to be yes.”

Cara puts her hand on his shoulder and slides her thumb over his collarbone to his neck, where she can feel his pulse pounding almost as hard as hers. Her resolve is crumbling. He’s ready, right? He’s been talking about his feelings. Not much crying, nightmares have mostly stopped. Does that mean he’s dealing with the trauma? Damned if she knows. A little voice in the back of her head warns her she should stop this right now. Just tell him to go to bed and they’ll talk about it in the morning—Oh, who is she kidding? She’s too far gone to stop now. She wants m o r e. . .

“Din, do you want to touch me? You can ask me.”

His breathing stutters; she can feel it against her mouth. “Can I. . . can I touch your hair?” he whispers.

“Yes, you can,” Cara confirms. He sits up a little and slides his hand over her hair, hesitantly. When he gets to the braid, he stops. “Do you want me to take out the braid?” she asks.

His wide-eyed nod is accompanied by a hard swallow. He looks like a little kid being offered a piece of cake. Cara has to suppress her grin as she takes out the hairband and works the braid out into loose curls.

“There. Do you like it better down?”

“Yes,” he says as his fingers trace the waves. “I like it either way. Up, down, it always looks beautiful to me.”

That’s just so damn sweet that Cara can’t help but smile now. Instantly his cheeks turn red and his hand stops moving. “Sorry, that was too much.”

“No, not at all. I’m just not used to anyone talking to me like that. Keep going, I like it.

His fingers weave into her hair and lightly brush along her scalp. She has to close her eyes. She’s lucky she’s sitting down because his gentle touch is making her weak in the knees. “What else do you want to touch?”

He licks his lips. His eyes flick down her body, then up again, then back down. He won’t meet her eye. He doesn’t say anything, although it’s obvious what he wants. It’s intoxicating. She can’t deny that she wants him, and she knows he wants her too. She’s not going to hurt him; she’s going to show him how good it can be.

“If you want to. . . go further, we can. It’s up to you,” she says, even though the small voice warns her it’s not really a fair question. Of course he’s going to say yes.

“. . . Do you want to?”

That small voice is still there, but her brain isn’t exactly making the decisions right now. Her body is calling all the shots. “Yes,” she breathes. “Do you?”

“Oh god yes.”

* * *

(Yes, I’m going to yada yada yada the sex scene. There might be youngsters reading)

* * *

Pillow talk is Cara’s favorite. When you’re sleepy and satisfied, the defenses come down, so you can keep the topic light and just get to know each other. Pillow talk with Mando is gonna be great—or it would be if he didn’t immediately fall asleep, stretched out on his stomach with his arms curled around his pillow and the blanket bunched up around his waist. How does he fall asleep so fast? It’s a special talent.

Cara curls up next to him and wraps an arm over his bare back. She times her breathing to his, and tries to shut up that little voice of warning by focussing on the good things: that curl at the base of his neck, his shy smile, the care he took in cleaning and repairing her armor, the fact that his injuries have almost healed, even the gash on his leg that she finally got a look at is now just a jagged pink scar. No, maybe don’t think about that one. Don’t think about what they did to him, and how it probably messed in a lot of ways he doesn’t even realize yet. Don’t worry that maybe she messed him up more. Try not to think about all the ways this could go wrong. That’s a tough one for a woman like her. She doesn’t know what to do with herself if everything’s not falling apart around her.

* * *

When Cara wakes up, the first thing she sees is Mando’s bare back. He’s sitting up in the bed next to her facing away, leaning forward with his hands in his lap. She takes a second to just admire the muscles under his skin, the curve of his spine, the little dip where his waist meets his hipbone. The whip marks are almost completely healed, there’s just a faint ridge left, but she only knows that because she felt them last night. The blanket is across his lap, but she can see his lower back now, and she notices he still has a pale white scar on the right side, just above his waist, a design of diagonal and horizontal lines deliberately laid out in a pattern, almost like writing, but no language she is familiar with.

As if he can sense her scrutiny, he turns his head slightly toward her and looks at her out of the corner of his eye. When he sees she’s awake, his mouth curves up at the corner in a shy half-smile. Cara supposes it’s the first time he’s woken up next to a topless woman. Aww. . . his first “morning after”.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey. Good morning.”

“What are you thinking about?”

He huffs, almost a chuckle. “You’re going to laugh at me.”

“Try me.”

“I was thinking how lucky I am. . . and then I felt guilty for feeling lucky.”

Cara grins. “That’s sweet.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me. Sweet.”

She laughs. “Yes you are.”

“I like to hear you laugh.” He’s mostly looking at the ceiling, but he’s sneaking peeks at her out of the corner of his eye, and judging by the upward quirk of his mouth, he’s enjoying what he sees, even if he quickly looks away. Cara deliberately folds down the blanket to give him a better view.

“You can look, you know.”

“Are you. . . are you sure?”

“Well, I let you touch them last night, so yeah, I’m ok with you looking.”

Another huff of a chuckle. He’s still looking out of the corner of his eye, but he’s still got the half-smile, and he doesn’t turn away this time. That’s good, right? He’s ok. She didn’t re-traumatize him. He’s _fine_. More than fine. He’s _happy_.

“Cara, when did you. . .um. . . when did you decide you wanted. . .”

“When did I decide I wanted you?”

“Um. . . yeah.”

“Well, it didn’t happen all at once, but I guess. . . on Treos, when I was teasing you and I first saw you smile. . . Also, you probably don’t even realize how adorable that curl is at the back of your neck.”

To her surprise, he looks a little disappointed, although he covers it quickly. “Oh.”

“What about you? When did you decide you liked me?”

He chews his lip. “When you pinned me.”

“What, at the market on Eovu?”

“Um. . . no. On Sorgan,” he says to the ceiling.

Eyebrows raised, Cara cranes her neck to try to look him in the eye. “On _Sorgan_?? You mean when we first met?”

“Yeah. No woman had ever laid me out like that before.” Even though his ears are turning pink, he meets her eye and flashes that dimpled smile that makes her stomach wobble. “You always surprise me, Cara.”

Well, the feeling’s mutual, and now Cara’s the one feeling awkward. Random compliments are not exactly something she’s used to. While she’s casting around for a new topic, her gaze falls on the pattern of scars on his lower back.

I’m going to touch your back.”

“Ok, thanks for telling me.”

Cara runs her hand down his spine to gently brush her fingers over the scar, tracing the horizontal and diagonal lines. “What’s this?”

His smile drops and his head ducks back down again. “It’s—uh. It’s her sigil. Xi’an. She carves it into all of her gear. She said—“ He breaks off and rubs his hand over his face. Oh, please don’t start crying. Cara’s sorry she asked, but before she can apologize, he drops his hand and says in a dismissive voice, “Anyway, she carved it in my back.

“Shoulda let me put Bactra on it.”

He shrugs, an eloquent lift and fall of his bare shoulders. “I don’t care. She doesn’t. . . own me.”

“You’re right, she doesn’t.” Cara studies his shoulders and winces at the tension that has suddenly appeared there. This is your fault, the little voice whispers. “Hey, wanna lay down with me? You know. . .snuggle?”

“Is that something people actually do?”

“You’re asking me if people actually snuggle after sex?”

“Yes.” He’s just sitting there patiently waiting for an answer. He really has no idea.

“Yes, people do. You should try it. It’s very. um. relaxing.”

He raises his eyebrows like he’s considering it, but then the computer beeps and he turns his head toward the cockpit. His jaw muscle is jumping again, dammit. “We should probably get ready. Only three more hours until we land.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter might be a while in coming, because I haven't finished writing the first draft of it yet. I have trouble writing a c t i o n. Apologies in advance.


	12. Thank you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long. I hate writing action, but from the comments it seemed like y'all really wanted to see some bloodshed, so I figured you wouldn't let me get away with yada yada yada for the fight scenes. So here's the first half, more to come later. . .

* * *

This time she gets dressed while he’s standing right in front of her, not that he even seems to notice. He’s got a faraway look in his eye as he pulls on his clothes.

“What are we going to find on Rathirria?” she asks him. He doesn’t respond, so she says, “Din?”

He blinks, “Huh?” He seems to realize she’s half-dressed, and ducks his head to button his pants.

“I asked what we’re going to find on Rathirria? Besides the kid, of course. Of course we hope we’re going to find the kid. But what else? Please don’t tell me more thorns.”

“No thorns. It’s. . . sort of cold.”

“So, dress for snow?” she asks as she rummages through her clothes looking for a long-sleeved undershirt. A sleeveless top probably won’t do in the cold.

“Probably. I don’t know about the seasons.” He attaches his holster to his belt, then starts loading up his pockets with stun grenades. “This bolthole is an abandoned cabin, nothing else around. Very quiet. We’ll have to come in from the east and land about a klick away to avoid being seen or heard. We’ll hike in over the ridge.”

“Hm. Ok.” Cara digs out a second pair of socks and a pair of gloves to add to her ensemble. She eyes her coat but leaves it where it is for now. Maybe it’ll be summer, she thinks hopefully.

After he has on his pants and shirt, Mando looks around like he’s thinking there should be something else to put on. After a second he shakes his head, sits down on the bed and starts pulling his socks on. His face is pale, mouth a hard, straight line; his eyebrows are puckered in the middle, and the skin around his eyes is pulled tight.

“Hey, Din,” Cara says, to get his attention before she sits down beside him. His hands go still on his half-tied boot and his eyes come up. He looks so scared, she wants to fix it. This is a problem, she knows. He’s not a wounded tooka; she can’t rescue him. “I’m going to kiss you now,” she says.

His eyes widen, going from scared to surprised, to hopeful, all in a fraction of a second. “Oh!”

“Do you want me to?”

“Yes! I just—I forgot we—“

Cara’s mouth pulls back at the corner. “You forgot we had sex last night? You forgot I’m your girlfriend now?”

He blinks. “You are?”

“Well, I assume so. Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

“More than anything,” he says.

“Well, then.” Cara taps him on one shoulder, then the other. “You’re my boyfriend.”

While he’s sitting there frozen, she takes the opportunity to lean in and kiss him, which immediately snaps him out of it. He responds so eagerly that she has to break the kiss to keep it from going any further.

“Thank you,” he says breathlessly.

“Did you just thank me for kissing you?”

“Yes, is that—ok?”

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“. . . Oh.”

“But you can thank me if you want. It’s sweet. I don’t mind,” she says quickly.

“So if you’re my girlfriend, does that mean—Can we—can we have sex again?”

“What, you mean right now?”

His lips purse like he’s considering it. “I don’t think we have enough time right now. Some other time.”

“Sure. Anytime you want. In fact. . .” She stands up and puts her hands on her heart. “I, Cara Dune, grant you, Din Djarin, permission to touch any part my body at any time you want, unless I expressly tell you different.”

Well now he looks like a kid who has been offered an entire cake and doesn’t know which part to eat first.

“Ok?”

“Ok. Yeah. Same. I mean, I always want you to touch me.”

“Always?”

“Always. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. All I want to do is make you happy.”

Now Cara’s the one glitching out. Damn it, why does he have to be so sweet? Doesn’t he know she doesn’t know _how_ to be happy?? Doesn’t he know she’s a screw-up who always manages to destroy relationships, and the more she wants it to work out, the more likely she is to mess it up?

“Cara, did I say something wrong?”

Shit, he looks confused again. It’s hard work being responsible for all these emotions. “No. It’s fine. We should probably finish getting ready now.”

He ducks his head and goes back to tying his boot. The anxious eyebrows have returned, and she wants to kiss him again to try to smooth them out, but the computer starts beeping to warn her they are approaching their destination, so she just pats him on the knee and heads up to the cockpit for their approach.

She can see, as soon as they enter the atmosphere, that “sort of cold” is a vast understatement. From horizon to horizon is an unbroken sheet of white. Just snow and ice as far as the eye can see. Shit. They’re going to tromp through all that, and with their luck the kid won’t even be there.

“Din?” she calls down. He doesn’t answer, but a few seconds later she hears his feet on the ladder, one boot and one sock. He comes into the cockpit carrying his other boot, lightweight jacket under his arm. The boy is going to freeze. to. death.

“How long of a walk did you say it would be?”

“Only about a klick. There’s a flat field just over the ridge from the cabin. I put the coordinates into the nav system.”

“A klick. You want us to walk a kilometer in the snow.”

“Yes. It’s not far.”

“It’s not far on a nice sunny day, but that’s a farking blizzard.”

“It’s not snowing that hard,” he says dismissively as he kneels down to tie his other boot. “We’ll be fine.”

“No, _I’ll_ be fine. _I_ have a warm coat and a hat. _You_ have a thin windbreaker. You don’t even have gloves.”

“I don’t mind the cold. I’ll be fine, I promise.”

* * *

Turns out Mando’s promises aren’t worth shit. They’re not even fifty meters from the ship before he crosses his arms and sticks his hands into his armpits. He’s fairly successful at suppressing his shivers, but Cara can’t help but notice that his lips are turning blue. Maybe he didn’t mind the cold when he was in full armor with no skin showing, but just dressed in a light jacket and cargo pants, he’s clearly feeling it. At least he put on her rebel trooper hat. although it doesn’t exactly cover his ears.

The snow is almost up to their knees, which means it’s gotten down into Cara’s boots and her feet are wet. It’s not bothering her yet, but she’s sure it will once they stop moving. Wet socks are the worst. Well, no, blaster wounds are the literal worst, but wet socks definitely rank up there in the top five.

Mando rubs his hands together as they plod along. The tips of his fingers are bone white. With a huff of exasperation, Cara yanks off her right glove. “Give me your hand,” she says. Teeth chattering, he holds out his left hand, but she pushes it away and grabs his right instead. Damn, his fingers feel like ice. She puts the glove in his right hand and says, “Put that on.”

“I d-don’t want to take your gloves,” he says, trying to hand it back to her.

She shakes her head. “Just put it on.”

“O—ok.” He tugs on the glove, then she takes his bare icicle of a left hand in her bare right and tucks them both into the pocket of her parka.

“Better?”

“Yes.”

As soon as they get to the top of the ridge, Mando drops down behind a large boulder, so Cara follows. Not that she has any choice, since he’s still got his hand in her pocket. He peeks out and around, then quickly pulls his head back, scrunching back down on his heels in the snow, shoulders up by his ears. He’s breathing fast, chest jerking up and down with each inhalation.

“Their ship is here.”

That’s good news, right? Why does Mando look like he’s having a panic attack? Time to lighten the mood with another of her never-fail mood-lighteners. “Ok. They’re here. That’s good, cuz I’m ready to super-kill ‘em.”

Mando does not crack a smile as she had hoped. Instead he just nods. “There’s cover to about the half-way point down the hill. From there we should have a view of the front door to the cabin. Keep low and follow me.”

“Yep.”

Light snow is falling, filling their footprints as they keep moving. Cara follows Mando around boulders and trees and snowdrifts in a zig-zag pattern that leaves her out of breath, but she doesn’t dare slow down because if she lets him out of her sight, she’ll never find him again, and she doesn’t have a way to call him other than stand up and shout.

He finally comes to an abrupt stop about a hundred meters down the hill, crouching behind a large boulder, and draws his blaster. Cara sinks down beside him, sitting on her heels to keep her butt out of the snow. He peeks out to check the front door, and quickly crouches down again.

“See anybody?”

His only response is a terse nod.

“Guarding the door?”

“Mayfeld.”

Cara peers through the foliage down the hill. At the bottom, in a clearing, squats a hulking clunker of a ship, and next to it, a dilapidated cabin with peeling blue paint. The door is to the right, picture window on the left. In front of the door she spots a bulky black parka with a shiny bald head sticking out the top. Looks like he has his chin tucked inside his collar. Cara can’t blame him. An E-11 is slung across his chest.

She crouches back down next to Mando, who is holding his blaster tightly against his chest. He has his eyes closed while he breathes evenly in through his nose and out through his mouth. creating clouds in the freezing air. Centering himself. Cara hopes it works. “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll circle around and approach from the side. I should be able to get behind him without being seen. You stay here and cover me. Once Mayfeld’s eliminated, you can join me and we’ll go in together.”

Cara does not like that plan, but she’s not going to fight him on it. This is his kid, his mission. She’s just the backup. “Got it,” she says. She squeezes his hand and lets go. He peels off her glove and gives it back to her, ignoring her attempts to refuse.

Mando heads out to the right, staying low behind the boulders and trees. From her vantage point up the hill, Cara watches his progress in small glimpses as he moves from one hiding spot to the next. The man at the door is leaning against the wall, hands jammed in his pockets and collar pulled up around his ears. Cara can see the little puffs of his breath in the cold.

To her right, she catches sight of Mando, picking his way down a steep incline. He’s almost directly even with the doorway, hidden from Mayfeld’s sight by a line of trees. As she watches, his foot slips, and he saves himself from falling by grabbing a tree branch, which wouldn’t have been a problem had the branch not been covered in snow, which dislodges. The newly lightened branch whips upward, colliding with the branch above and dislodging more snow. Mando jumps back to avoid being buried, but Cara sees that the noise and motion have caught Mayfeld’s attention. He raises his E-11 and sights through the scope toward the trees. Shit! There goes their element of surprise.

Mayfeld takes three steps toward the trees and fires in a sweeping motion. Mando hits the ground on his belly, arms over his head. Mayfeld keeps advancing, even though he obviously can’t see what he’s shooting at yet. Cara’s got a bead on the man, and Mando did say to cover him. This would seem to fall under that category, so she fires, just once. Blood sprays out over the snow and Mayfeld falls flat on his face with no attempt to catch himself. One down, two to go. Too bad he’s not the one who hurt Mando.

Unfortunately, the sound of the blasters has drawn attention from the others inside the house. A head appears in the doorway: blue-gray skin, female—Twi’lek? Cara is lining up her shot when she hears the sound of Mando’s blaster, but the bolt strikes the ground in front of the doorway. The Twi-lek disappears and the door slams shut. Dammit! Why didn’t Mando aim better? They could’ve had her!

They need to regroup and figure out what to do next, because their plan is screwed. Cara keeps low as she scuttles her way toward Mando’s position, half-crawling, half-sliding on her butt on the steeper sections. She’s about half-way there when Mando suddenly appears beside her. He grabs her arm and pulls her down next to him behind a boulder.

“Why did you miss?” she hisses at him, peeking out to check the door for movement. She can’t see anything right now, so she quickly ducks back.

“She had the kid with her.”

Cara’s heart leaps up into her throat. She hadn’t seen the kid, not at all. She had been so focused on the woman that she hadn’t noticed the kid. She could’ve killed him. Despite the cold, her hands are suddenly sweating. Shit.

“What are we doing next?”

Mando doesn’t get a chance to answer her, because at that moment, a voice calls out from the cabin. “Hey Maaandooo!”

Mando’s breathing stutters to a stop. His shoulders pull up and he sort of shrinks down into his jacket. His hands are trembling; he pulls the blaster in against his chest to still them. His face. . . this isn’t Mando having an anxiety attack, this is Mando _scared shitless_. If it weren’t for the baby, Cara would be blowing that woman’s farking head off right now.

“Hey, Mando, your baby is pretty cute,” a male voice calls.

They hear the baby babbling. Mando’s eyes widen and his breathing starts again, hard and fast through his nose. His jaw is clenched and his gaze is _intense_.

“Yeah, that’s right, daddy is here! He’s outside!”

The kid shouts, “AAH!” followed by more babbling. Mando swallows hard, then twists around and peeks through the trees, trying to lay eyes on the baby.

Cara peeks through the tree branches on the other side and spots a male Twi’lek (Qin? Ken? something like that) framed in the window, which is open a few inches. He’s got the baby in the crook of one arm and a blaster in the other hand. From this distance, she can’t tell if the kid’s hurt, but he’s moving around ok. She’s pretty sure she can take out the dude with a headshot, but the chick is right behind his shoulder and she’s also got a blaster on the kid.

The guy is bouncing the kid in his arm and cooing at him. It’s pretty clear to Cara that they’re working hard to keep the baby happy and calm, probably so he won’t kill them. Sitting back against the rock next to Mando, she decides she really hopes it works, because the kid is unlikely to be able to kill them both at once, which means that the other one could blow his head off. These are the places her mind goes. _Dark places_. Judging by the expression on Mando’s face, his mind is in similar dark places.


	13. Cara's Reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter follows directly from the end of Chapter 12. If you can't remember what was happening, you might want to go back and look at the end of that chapter before reading.

* * *

“You want your baaaby, Mando?” Xi’an calls. “Everybody wants this little guy. Imps are on their way right now. They’re paying a premium for the little womp rat.”

Mando growls under his breath, “Don’t call him that.”

“YOU call him that,” Cara whispers.

“That’s different.”

“I bet they’d pay a lot for you too! They REALLY hate you, Mando,” Xi’an shouts, with an obscene amount of glee in her voice. Cara bets she’d just love to hand Mando over to them. She peeks out through the branches again and lines up her blaster. She’s not going to take the shot, but Mando pushes her hand down anyway.

“It’s too risky.”

“I know. We’re going to have to find a different way in. Is there a back door?”

“Yes, but it’s in the open. We’d have to circle all the way around. They’re going to figure out we’ve moved.”

“I can get in there. They don’t even know I’m here.”

There is a longish pause while Mando processes, and probably runs all the scenarios through his brain. Finally, he nods, just once.

“I can distract them from here while you circle around.”

“Good plan.”

“Be careful. Please.”

“I promise I won’t shoot the kid.”

His baby porg eyes meet hers, eyebrows drawn together in concern. “No, I mean, be careful with yourself. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Well, that’s. . . sweet, but not exactly what she needs to hear before jumping into a fight. “Aww. . . thanks.” She takes his reddened hands and rubs them between her gloves. “I’ll be careful. You be careful too.”

Cara calculates the angle of the hill, and moves her feet carefully to avoid sliding like Mando did. She’s got a fair bit of experience with rough terrain, and she’s dressed for the cold; even though her socks are wet, at least her feet are warm.

As she goes, she hears Xi’an’s voice call, “Maybe we can sell him to you instead. What do you think, Mando?”

“What’s your price?” Mando calls back.

Xi’an giggles. “So you ARE there! I knew it! Don’t worry, we’ll cut you a good deal. How about fifty thousand credits?”

“How about you give me my kid back and I don’t destroy your ship?”

“You destroy my ship and I’ll blow his head off!” the man’s voice shouts.

“Then you won’t have any leverage,” Mando replies. His voice is calm. If Cara didn’t know better, she’d think he was confident. Sure of himself. Not scared out of his mind.

While Mando bickers back and forth with them, Cara keeps inching her way down the hill, past the outdated Starhopper and around the building. She ends up behind the building, where everything is quiet. The back door is closed. It has a small window at eye level, but she can’t see in from her position. Carefully she sidles up to the door. She knows she’s leaving footprints in the snow, but that can’t be helped. She can only hope they don’t look out the back window before she gets to them.

She cautiously peeks in the window of the back door and finds herself looking into a filthy kitchen, dimly lit by a single bulb. Dirty dishes and leftover food litter the counter. When she touches the doorknob, it gives, so the door’s unlocked. Given the rusty state of the hinges, she’s sure the door will squeak when she opens it.

Suddenly she hears blaster fire, which almost makes her heart jump out of her chest until she realizes it came from the woods, not the house. Judging by the cries of dismay coming from the Twi’leks, Mando must be following through on his threat to shoot their ship.

Cara is waiting when the blaster reports from the woods again, this time accompanied by the sound of metal cracking and a series of thumps and thuds. Mando must not have been aiming at the engine core or the ship would’ve exploded. Cara uses the cacophony as cover to push the door open with her shoulder. If it makes a noise, she can’t hear it over the sound of their ship being systematically dismantled out front. As more metallic clunks drift in from the front of the cabin, accompanied by increasing shouting, she quickly closes the door behind her so they won’t be alerted by the cold air rushing in.

Tiptoeing down the hall, she glances around the end of the wall just enough to see their backs silhouetted against the window. She can see the outline of Xi’an’s neck between her lekku. It would be so easy right now just to slit her throat. If it weren’t for the guns aimed at the kid, Cara would do it. Paint the walls with her blood. It would be a beautiful thing. But she can’t, not yet. Qin has a hostage, so Cara needs a hostage. They have to get the kid away from Qin first. THEN Cara can cut Xi’an open and let her slowly bleed out on the floor.

Stepping softly, Cara moves up behind Xi’an and puts the muzzle of her gun to the back of her head. Xi’an freezes, so Cara reaches around her and takes the blaster from her hand. Xi’an turns her head just enough to see Cara, and her mouth curls up in a cruel, knowing smile as she raises her now-empty hands. Cara gestures her down to her knees and she goes willingly, but as she does so, she taps Qin’s shoulder.

Qin turns with the kid in his arms, then takes a step back, holding the kid up in front of him as a shield. As soon as the kid sees her, his eyes widen and he starts making grabby hands in her direction. He’s a filthy mess, but she can’t tell if he’s injured through the dirt.

Xi’an places her hands on her head and Cara grabs her wrists in one hand while keeping her blaster trained on the back of her head.

“Who are you?” Xi’an says, lip curled.

“Not your friend,” Cara informs her shortly. “Put the kid down,” she orders Qin, who laughs.

“Looks like a standoff,” he says casually, “And I don’t think you want him harmed, so you’ll have to put the gun down.”

“If you hurt the kid, I’ll have to kill your sister.”

“What makes you think that would bother me?” Qin’s voice sounds bored, but there’s an edge to it. Cara thinks he would very much mind if she killed his sister. However, if she kills Xi’an, she won’t have any leverage left.

She catches motion through the window out of the corner of her eye, but carefully does not look so as not to alert Qin. So Mando has managed to get down the hill and around the side of the cabin. He’d better hurry up and get his ass in here before one of her hostages decides to make a move.

She’s not entirely surprised when the window shatters and Mando comes flying through. He tucks and rolls and pops back up to his feet, blaster in hand aimed at Qin’s head. As the dust settles, Cara glances up at Mando and discovers that, although he had his arms up, some glass must’ve gotten through because blood is pouring from his right temple, looks like from multiple small cuts. Jumping through windows without any protection’ll do that to you.

The baby squeals and reaches desperately for Mando. Mando’s got his gun pointed at Qin’s head, but he’s looking at the kid just as desperately. “It’s ok, Ad’ika,” Mando says, “It’s ok,” like blood isn’t running down his face and they aren’t stuck in a stand-off right now.

“Give me the baby,” Mando growls at Qin.

“Uh-uh, Mando, he’s my baby now, isn’t he? I’m his daddy now.” Qin bounces the baby, who is looking back and forth between Mando and Qin. It’s clear he doesn’t know what’s going on, but also clear that he doesn’t like it. He whines and squirms, pushing against Qin’s arm with one hand while reaching for Mando with the other.

“Give us the baby or I kill her,” Cara says, pressing the muzzle of her blaster against Xi’an’s temple.

Xi’an giggles. “Ooh, you found yourself a little girlfriend, huh, Mando?” she purrs.

Mando’s eyes flit to her for a second. “Shut up.”

Xi’an giggles again and turns back to Cara. “Did you know he likes to be tied up? He gets off on it.”

Shit, Mando’s glitching out again. It’s that “I don’t know what to say” expression. Xi’an’s watching his face closely, obviously enjoying his shame, as she continues. “Did he tell you he _begged_ me to carve my mark into him? He belongs to _me_.” Xi’an leers toothily at Cara. “But don’t worry, we can share him.”

Mando’s eyes dart to Cara, then quickly away again. His bloody face rapidly cycles through a slew of emotions. There’s uncertainty there, and definite undercurrents of fear, and pain, and shame. He can’t possibly think she’d believe this, can he? Cara wants to shoot her right now, right in the head, but if the kid gets hurt or killed, Mando will never get over it, so she has to wait, even though it’s killing her.

The kid is watching Mando too, and Cara sees all the emotions crossing Mando’s face reflected in the kid’s eyes, a perfect little mirror. Mando’s looking back and forth between Cara and Xi’an, so he doesn’t see when the kid’s hand goes up and his eyes slide half-shut.

The wind kicks up, not from outside because it’s blowing directly in Cara’s face. The kid’s mouth is a thin line and his eyes are almost shut. Snow swirls around them, driven in through the broken window.

Xi’an’s mouth opens but no words come out. Her hands go to her throat. Cara knows that feeling, like drowning. Mando is looking back and forth between her and the kid now, eyes wide. “No, Ad’ika!” Mando shouts over the growing wind. “Stop!”

Qin is distracted enough by his sister turning a darker shade of blue that his finger slides off the trigger and the muzzle of his blaster drops. Cara takes the opportunity to drop him with a headshot. Qin crumples like an empty suit, and the kid tumbles out of his arms, rolls, and bounces back up to his feet, unharmed. He toddles, arms outstretched, toward Mando, who sinks to his knees, drops his blaster down beside him, and folds the kid into his arms.

Instantly the wind dies down, and it’s suddenly so quiet that all Cara can hear is Mando’s harsh breathing. His eyes are closed and his nose is buried against the top of the kid’s head. The only part she can see of the kid is the tip of one filthy ear, and his claw-like fingers tangled in Mando’s hair. Snowflakes flutter silently down around them, landing on Mando’s head and shoulders. A flake settles on Cara’s eyelashes, but she doesn’t want to move to brush it away.

In the stillness, Cara becomes aware of movement to her right, Xi’an furtively reaching toward Mando’s dropped weapon. As soon as she notices Cara looking at her, she quickly straightens up and returns her hands to her head, face expressionless but her eyes cut to the still body of her dead brother. Cara rests the muzzle of her blaster against Xi’an’s temple. She’s ready to super-kill her, but that moment belongs to Mando, and right now he is preoccupied with his reunion with the kid, so Cara waits.

Finally Mando looks up like he’s suddenly remembered the two of them are there. His gaze skips past Xi’an as if she means nothing, and locks into Cara’s. His eyes are very open and filled with almost palpable relief. Cara would like nothing more than to sink down on the floor and wrap her arms around both of them, but they have one more problem to deal with first.

“What are we going to do with her?” Cara asks, hoping he’ll give her the nod, but he shakes his head. Stuffing his blaster back into its holster, Mando digs his cuffs out of his pocket.

“Leave her for the Imps,” he says, holding out the cuffs, “Or the New Republic, whoever gets here quicker.”

Xi’an’s eyes widen, even as Cara slaps the cuff on her wrist and yanks her arms behind her back. “They’ll torture me!” she cries.

“I don’t care,” Mando says without even looking. He’s got his nose against the top of the kid’s head again, and his voice is muffled because his mouth is pressed to the kid’s temple. Mando’s blood drips onto the kid’s already stained and ripped clothes.

As Cara is securing the Twi’lek to the radiator in the wall, she spots a duffel bag in the corner. The fabric is floppy enough that she can make out a roundish shape. Is that. . . ? She opens the zipper a few inches and spies something silver that glimmers in the pale light from the window. It’s Mando’s helmet, and when she opens the zipper a little further, she discovers the rest of his armor as well. She turns her head to find Mando still on his knees focused on the kid.

Cara hefts the bag over her shoulder and goes to them, ignoring Xi’an’s pleading eyes. She doesn’t know she’s lucky to be alive. If it were up to Cara, the Twi’lek would be bleeding out on the floor already. Mando’s head doesn’t turn, but his eyes shift to the bag. She can spot the exact moment when he figures out what’s inside, because _shit_ those baby porg eyes are back.

“Let’s go,” Mando says, standing up and tucking the kid inside his jacket. He’d be a lot warmer inside Cara’s coat, but she doesn’t mention that, just follows them outside, where the clouds have thickened and light flurries have turned into steady snowfall.

“You know, she’ll tell them who took the kid,” Cara says as they trudge away from the cabin, past the wreckage of the Starhopper toward the ridge.

“They’ll figure it out anyway.”

“True.” She takes three more steps before she realizes Mando has stopped. She turns back to find him looking at the kid’s ear, so Cara looks too. In the outside light, it’s obvious that not all of the dark smudges are dirt. Looks like someone grabbed him and dragged him by the ear. Mando’s touch is still light as he brushes his finger over the bruises, but his blood-streaked face is hard and his eyes are intense. The kid starts to whimper.

“It’s ok, Ad’ika, you’re not in trouble,” Mando says gently. Cara waits for the nod, the one that means she’s going back in there to shoot that woman in the head, like they talked about. Mando’s breathing is harsh and uneven. He finally pulls the kid in again, makes eye contact with Cara, and nods. Cara feels something loosen inside her chest as she nods back. Killing is what she does, it’s what she knows how to do, what she’s good at.

She kisses the kid on the head, transfers the bag to Mando’s shoulder, and tromps back into the cabin, retracing Mando’s footprints as she goes, where the snow is already pressed down. Xi’an looks up at her eagerly, but immediately her smile turns to panic, that she quickly hides with feigned boredom.

“Oh, it’s you. Back for more tips on what Mando likes?”

Cara strolls across the floor toward her, blaster in hand. “Mando sent me back in her to kill you for hurting the kid,” she says.

Xi’an’s mask of boredom slips just a little, giving Cara a glimpse of the terror underneath. Cara feels her mouth tug upward in satisfaction. “But I’m not going to do that,” she says, sliding her blaster back into its holster.

An expression of hope flicks across Xi’an’s face. “You’re not?”

“No.” Cara slips her knife from its sheath. “I’m not going to kill you for hurting the kid,” she says, touching the point of the blade to Xi’an’s breastbone, “I’m going to kill you for hurting _Mando_.”

Xi’an’s eyes widen and her mouth opens, but Cara slides the blade in between her ribs before she can make a sound. Cara doesn’t usually like killing with a knife. It’s too messy and personal. But this time, messy and personal are exactly what Cara is looking for. She’s close enough to watch the light drain out of Xi’an’s eyes, and also close enough to be splashed with bright turquoise blood across the front of her coat.

She pulls out the knife and Xi’an slumps over the radiator, blood pooling on the floor in front of her. Cara expects to feel something: triumph, excitement, relief, but she feels nothing but disgust. She wipes her knife blade on her leggings, slides it back in the sheath, and walks out, leaving the body sprawled grotesquely across the floor.


	14. Freeze

* * *

When she gets outside, she finds Mando kneeling on the ground, holding the kid in one arm and digging in the duffle bag with the other. As soon as she gets close enough, Mando hands her the kid, then pulls out his flamethrower from the duffle bag and fits the pieces together. While Cara tucks the kid inside her jacket, Mando aims the flamethrower at the weathered siding. It catches immediately, despite the cold, and within a few seconds, the entire front of the cabin is on fire. He walks back to them, silhouetted against the orange flames, hoists the duffle bag onto this shoulder, and heads out into the worsening blizzard. Cara follows, carefully stepping into his footprints to keep from getting stuck in the snow. The wind drives flakes into her face so hard she has to struggle to keep her footing.

Over the whistling of the wind, she hears a deeper roaring coming from above: Tie fighters, she’d recognize the sound of their engines anywhere, even though she can’t see them yet. Shit shit SHIT! This must be the buyers Xi’an was talking about. Mando grabs her hand and they both run for the treeline. The fast-falling snow is a blessing now because it quickly covers their tracks. As they make it to the cover of the trees Cara turns back just long enough to see two Tie fighters appear on the horizon behind them, and then she is concentrating too hard on running through knee-deep snow up a steep hill. She keeps one hand on the kid’s back while she and Mando pull each other around boulders and over fallen tree trunks. The wind is driving the snow into their faces, making each step a struggle. Cara can’t feel the tip of her nose, and every breath feels like her lungs are freezing from the inside out.

They are almost to the top of the ridge when Mando puts a foot wrong and twists his ankle. He lands hard on his knee and bare hand, pushes himself back up to his feet with help from Cara. He’s limping now, but it barely slows him down as they sprint across the flat field where they left the ship, out in the open. If those Tie fighters decide to investigate the area around the cabin, they’ll be discovered immediately. They have to get out of there quick.

When they get to the ship, Cara has to use the palmprint reader for the hatch, which she can’t do with her gloves on. She shoves the kid into Mando’s trembling arms and peels off her right glove. As soon as the skin is exposed, the freezing wind bites into her flesh and her fingers are instantly numb. She can barely hold her hand still long enough for the sensor to read her palm. When the panel finally flashes green and the door creaks open, she almost cries in relief, or she would if her tear ducts weren’t frozen solid.

As soon as the gangway hits the ground, she and Mando both scramble inside, and Cara hits the controls to close the hatch behind them. It clunks shut, and they all stand in the cabin in the sudden silence, covered in snow and shivering uncontrollably.

It takes Cara a few seconds to remember they aren’t out of the woods yet. There are still two Tie fighters just over the ridge, and likely a larger ship somewhere in orbit, that they have to evade before they are safe. Which means they need to get off the ground and to the nearest hyperspace lane as quickly as possible. She has to _move_ , but Mando is rooted to the deckplates, blocking her path.

Cara grabs a blanket off their bed and slings it around Mando’s shoulders. “Din, I have to get us out of here. You ok?”

“Y-yeah,” he says, pulling the blanket in around himself and the kid. His face is still bleeding sluggishly, slowed by the cold. His cheeks and nose are red, and there’s frost in his mustache. The kid’s eyes are drooping, his skin is more gray than his usual green, and icicles are encrusted in the hairs at the tips of his ears. Neither of them look ok, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that right now.

“All right, good. You guys sit down so you don’t fall down.” She pounds up the ladder without waiting to see if he obeys. Every second they stick around increases their likelihood of discovery, and she doesn’t think her reflexes are up to a firefight right now, what with her fingers half-frozen and her eyes half-blinded by the wind and snow. The ship is covered in ice, but she doesn’t have time to warm it up slowly. As she fires up the engines, she prays to the Maker she doesn’t believe in that the casing won’t crack with the sudden temperature change. The metal creaks and groans, but no warning lights come on, so she’s calling it a win.

As soon as the engines are at full capacity, she throttles up and gets them the hell out of there. The ship shudders, shaking off snow and ice, but they manage to get out of the atmosphere in one piece, thankfully. Nearest Hyperspace lane is only an hour away at max drive, so she heads for it. She has no idea what to do after that, but at least they’ll be far away from here.

With the course laid in and the autopilot engaged, and no one on their tail as far as her sensors can detect, she finally has a second to relax. A wave of exhaustion washes over her, and she slumps down into the pilot seat like her bones have all turned to jelly. Her system is still flooded with excess adrenaline, which makes her knees wobbly and her hands heavy. She couldn’t get up if she tried, so she doesn’t even try.

After a few minutes, over the roar of the engines, she becomes aware of the sound of the kid cooing and chirping, and underneath that, Mando’s stuttering breathing. Is he all right? It’s enough to drag her out of her seat to the ladder to check. Then she’s gotta sit on the ladder and just stare, cuz seriously. . .

Mando is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the cabin floor with the kid on his lap and the blanket wrapped around them both. His hat is pushed back and the kid has one hand on his cheek and the other tangled in his wet hair. The kid is kissing him all over his face, which is a blood-smeared mess. Mando’s sobbing hard; his eyes are red and his nose is running. Cara feels her eyes fill up too.

Cara doesn’t want to intrude on what looks like a private moment, so she’s about to head back up to the cockpit when Mando looks up, sniffles, and holds out his arm to her in a clear invitation. It’s irresistible. Cara climbs down the ladder and slips under his arm. He wraps the blanket around her too, drawing her into their embrace. It’s warm under the blanket, which feels so good. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until the warmth soaks through her wet clothes and into her skin. She lays her head on Mando’s shoulder and feels his chest jerking up and down. His sobs are loud in her ear.

“It’s good, right?” she says, sliding her arm around his waist. “We got him back.”

“Yeah, it’s—it’s good,” he agrees, but his shoulders are still shuddering and his tears don’t slow down. Cara closes her watering eyes and runs her hand up and down his back, over the bumps from his vertebrae and ribs, feeling his muscles tremble and jerk with every shaky breath.

The kid makes a cooing noise, like a baby bird, then Cara feels his little hand touching her face. His skin is warm and smooth. His three little fingers slide down her face to her cheek and stay there. The warmth from his touch soaks in through her skin, permeates her muscles and into her bones, warming her from the inside out. Through her closed eyelids she can see a bright glow, like sunshine.

When she opens her eyes, it’s like. . .diving into a bubble of light. She doesn’t even have words to describe it. She can barely make out the walls of the ship past the shimmering golden glow that surrounds them. Inside the bubble, it’s as if the concept of “joy” is a tangible thing, like she could reach out her hand and catch it. The kid giggles and the sound hangs in the air, separates and floats past her like little blaze bugs. She turns her head to follow the motion, and sees out of the corner of her eye that the wall is incomplete. The far side of the bubble is broken open, like a crack in a brick wall. Through the crack, she can see a roiling, pulsating darkness, like storm clouds. The little glowing blaze bugs are sucked out of the crack, as tentacles of dark gray try to push their way in.

Cara feels an unreasonable surge of fear, even though she knows they are perfectly safe in the cabin. As she’s trying to make sense of it, the crack starts to fill in with golden bricks, until it’s all sealed up again, except now she can see the seams between the bricks, and tiny glimpses of the roiling sea of dark gray outside.

“Din, um. . . are you seeing this?”

“. . . Seeing what?”

“Um. . . like. . . light around us?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“There’s, like, gold walls, and gray stuff, and. . .” She trails off, because the image has faded away, leaving only the plain gray walls of the cabin. Ok, that’s . . . weird. The kid’s hand slides off her face, and when she looks down at him, she discovers he has fallen asleep against Mando’s chest. Mando’s not sobbing uncontrollably anymore, but he is still crying, silently, and his breathing is still jerky and uneven. His face is smeared with tears and partially congealed blood. It’s such a mess that it’s impossible to tell how bad the cuts are. Given the amount of blood he’s got on his face and clothes, they’re going to need some meds to heal properly.

“Hey Din? Let’s get you cleaned up, ok? Those cuts need Bacta.”

Mando doesn’t say anything, but he does carefully lay the baby on the bed and let her lead him into the bathroom, blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. Cara guides him to sit on the closed lid of the vactube. While he cries, silently and motionlessly, she wets a cloth and wipes off the blood from his forehead. Most of the blood is congealed or dried, so it takes a bit of rubbing to get enough of it off that she can start looking for the cuts. When she finally gets down to the skin, she can’t find any cuts on his forehead. She keeps going, down the side of his face. Still no cuts. Finally most of the blood is gone, but the skin is completely unbroken. Even the remnants of the bruise on his forehead have vanished.

Cara cocks her head and frowns at his unblemished skin. He’s still crying hard, his eyes are red and his chin is wrinkled up. He’s looking down at his hands, which are still smeared with blood and dirt. Cara crouches in front of him and tries to get him to look at her. “Din, how do you feel?”

His brow furrows. There is a long pause before he answers. “I don’t know. I’m happy.”

“You don’t look happy.”

“I should be happy, right? I don’t know. I—I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m all mixed up.”

“It’s ok to cry. Adrenaline does that to you. Makes your emotions go haywire. Here, stand up.”

He doesn’t move, but he does glance up at her through his lashes. She takes his hand, tugs him to his feet, and stands him in front of the mirror. “What do you see?”

“This again?”

“Just _look_.”

Another pause. Finally his eyes come up to meet his reflection. Immediately he starts trying to wipe the tears from his face. Cara catches his hand before he can pull the hat back down over his forehead.

“No, look at your face.”

He scowls at his reflection. It’s clear he doesn’t see what she means. After a minute he shrugs. “Sorry, I can’t see what you see. Surprise me.”

“The cuts are gone. On your face. They’re gone.”

Still scowling, he leans in and examines his face in the mirror. “I could feel them, I know I was bleeding. What happened to them?”

“Take a guess.”

“The kid must’ve done it.”

“What did you feel while you were holding him? When he had his hand on your face?”

“Just . . .happy to have him back.”

“Nothing else?”

“No. Why?”

Cara bites her lip, picturing those tentacles of roiling darkness, and that pang of unreasonable fear. It didn’t come from her, she’s sure of that. Did it come from Mando, or the kid? Does she want to know?

At that moment, the computer dings. Time for Hyperspace. Time to get out of this system, and go. . . Where? No idea. “Never mind,” she says. “I’m glad you’re happy. Time to get the hell out of here.”

* * *

Cara hustles up to the cockpit. She hears Mando close the bathroom door and walk across the cabin, but he doesn’t come up the ladder. As her hand hovers over the controls, she realizes she has not a clue of where to go next.

“Where do you want to go?” She calls down to Mando.

“It doesn’t matter,” he calls back up.

Well, she’s got to make a decision now, because if she waits until they are actually in the lane, it will be too late. Damn, she wishes she had some dried berries to chew on because her stomach is in knots. Glancing quickly over the nav station display, she sees a name she recognizes, Chuunar. Fiercely independent, never conquered by the Empire, refused to join the New Republic. It would make a decent place to go to disappear until they get things figured out.

Four minutes later, she exits the lane to find complete peace and stillness. No other ships around, no traffic, no com chatter. Only two planets in the system, only Chuunar is inhabited. Cara points them in the direction of the planet and cuts the engines. They’re in no hurry to go nowhere, might as well take it slow and conserve fuel.

Even though everything is quiet around them, Cara’s mind isn’t quiet. She’s feeling overwhelmed, and whenever she feels that way, her thoughts head down a dark path. What is she going to do with them? They’ve accomplished their original mission—getting the kid back—but now Mando has no ship and no other support, so she can’t exactly just ditch them and go back to work. Her optimistic message to Karga that she’d be back on the job soon seems like a pipe dream. Since she left the Rebel Corps, she’s been on her own, making her own decisions, not beholden to anyone, and now not only does she have an employer she’s letting down, she is saddled with an emotional, broken man and a kid who has no idea how to control his powers. She’s seen how that turns out, and it’s not pretty.

Noises from the cabin interrupt her foul train of thought. Whimpering from the kid, and soft comforting noises from Mando. She leans over and peers down the ladder to find Mando with the kid against his shoulder, gently patting his back. His voice is so quiet she has to listen closely to make out the words. “It’s ok, Ad’ika. You’re safe. Buir is here. Cara is here. We love you.”

Her downward spiral of surliness cannot withstand that level of cuteness. As she’s thinking, d’awww, she remembers Mando’s face is still smeared with blood and tears, and the kid is a filthy mess. She feels pretty grimy herself, come to think of it. Her coat is still streaked with Xi’an’s blood, and she’s got Mando’s blood under her fingernails. Time to throw everyone in the shower. They’ll feel more human once they’re clean. Well, she and Mando will feel more human. The kid will feel more. . . whatever he is.


	15. Dadda

* * *

Mando decides that he will get in the shower, then Cara will hand the kid to him to wash. This works great right up to the point where Mando hands her back a wet, naked kid and she doesn’t have a towel ready or anything to dress him in.

“What should he wear?”

“One of my t-shirts, I guess,” Mando calls from the shower, while Cara holds the kid out and lets him drip-dry. The kid thinks this is great fun. He giggles and squirms while Cara desperately tries to hang onto his slippery little torso. She manages to find Mando’s dark blue t-shirt crumpled up at the foot of his unused bed, but when she puts it on the kid, it hangs down past his feet. She sits him on the side of the bed and ties up the shirt so he doesn’t trip over it.

“Now, are you hungry?” she asks him, holding up a protein bar—pickled coodler roe, which Mando had said was his favorite. He cocks his head to the side and makes grabby hands toward the bar. She’ll take that as a yes, so she hands him the bar, and he starts trying to eat it wrapper and all.

“Hang on, let me take the wrapper off,” she says, reaching for the bar. He starts chewing faster. It takes Cara a minute to pry it out of his mouth. He makes little whining noises while she opens the wrapper. As soon as she’s got the bar unwrapped, it flies out of her hand back to the kid, who starts stuffing it into his mouth. He certainly seems to enjoy it, although he ends up with more of it on his hands and face than he does in his mouth.

Next she gives him a water bottle that he mostly spills all over his shirt. As soon as he’s done drinking, he drops the bottle, jumps to his feet and holds out his arms to be held. Cara looks doubtfully at him, then toward the bathroom where she can still hear the shower running, then back at the kid, who is now making the grabby hands in her direction. She takes an involuntary step closer and he starts trying to climb her. Ok, ok, she’ll hold him, not that she has any choice.

As soon as she gets him in her arms, he snuggles in and lays his head on her shoulder with a sigh of contentment. His sticky little hands pat her face and tangle themselves in her hair. Cara can’t help but rub his back, gently in small circles. Her fingers find their way to his fuzzy head, which is softer than she expected. She strokes the hairs across the top of his head, and then keeps going out to the tip of his ear.

“What the heck _was_ that, huh kid? Were you in my head?” she whispers. He doesn’t answer, but he does lift his head and gaze into her eyes. “You don’t know what I’m saying, do you?”

His only response is a toothy grin and a string of babbled nonsense. He pats her cheek and lays back down against her shoulder. Cara feels an unreasonable surge of love for the little guy. She can’t help but rock him a little, and after a minute she starts humming a half-remembered tune from her childhood, one that her mother used to sing to her.

_Fly little bird_

_Fly away in the night_

_Fly away in the moonlight_

_Fly little baby_

_Fly away, you’ll go far_

_on your ship made of stars. . ._

The kid’s eyes drift shut and his fingers drop from her cheek. As she’s kissing him on top of his fuzzy head, she realizes she can no longer hear the shower running. She turns her head to find Mando, back in his jammies, leaning against the doorway of the bathroom and watching her with a watery, gooey smile.

Cara rolls her eyes at him, even as her mouth tugs up in a half-grin. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You know I can see your face, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” He crosses the cabin to her, reaches out, and then stops short of touching her. “Is it ok if I hug you?”

“I gave you blanket permission to touch any part of me at any time, unless I expressly tell you different. Remember?”

“I was just making sure.” He slides his arms around her from behind, wrapping both her and the kid up in his embrace. His skin is warm and he smells sooo good. Cara closes her eyes and just breathes him in.

“Thank you,” he murmurs in her ear.

“For what?”

“For killing Xi’an when I couldn’t. For helping me get my kid back.” He pauses to push her hair to the side and kiss her neck. Now she’s the one feeling gooey. “For helping me search for his people.”

Funny, Cara doesn’t remember promising to do that, but she doesn’t feel like arguing about it right now, not when he’s so warm, and his touch is so gentle, and he smells like her Starblossom shampoo. . .

Come to think of it, she doesn’t smell very good herself. In fact, she’s still got Xi’an’s blood all over her coat, and possibly on her skin as well. Luckily, the shower is now free. Too bad Mando’s already clean or she would suggest he share it with her. In the interest of saving water, of course.

* * *

Cara ends up putting her coat into the recycler because the blood won’t wash off. She’s got some in her hair too, which she only realizes when she gets into the shower and sees turquoise swirl in with the water washing down the drain.

When she comes out of the bathroom, feeling like a new woman all dressed in clean jammies with her teeth brushed, she finds Mando sitting on the floor of the cabin, while the kid sleeps on the bed next to him. His armor is spread out on the floor. He’s staring at his helmet, which sits on his lap. He looks up and flashes a half-smile, not the shy one from before. This is a sad smile. Oh, she wishes she could make it a happy smile, but that’s not what he needs right now. He needs to feel his feelings, not hide them. Or at least that’s what her mom used to say. She thought her mom was full of shit at the time, but it’s funny how even though her mom’s been dead for years, she keeps getting wiser as Cara gets older.

“Hey,” Cara says, sitting down beside him.

“Hey,” he says, then goes back to staring at the helmet. Cara gets to practice her patience for a while before he finally says, “It’s like looking in a mirror.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“Give it back to the covert on Nevarro. They’ll find a use for the beskar.”

“Even if it wasn’t your fault? Even if you didn’t choose it?”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. I broke my oath. This is The Way.”

Cara wants to argue the matter further. She wants to try to convince him that The Way is wrong, that he’s not to blame, that he can still be who he wants to be. . . but at that moment the kid makes a tiny whimpering noise. Without even looking up, Mando hooks his arm over the side of the bed and gently pats the kid on the back, whispering “Shh shh shh” until he settles. It’s so sweet Cara can’t stand it. She scoots closer and slips an arm around Mando’s waist.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

He shrugs. “It is what it is. There’s nothing I can do about it, so I might as well make the most of it.”

“True.”

“I still have you, and now I have my kid back. I lost everything and gained a family. Not a bad swap, I guess.”

Cara doesn’t move, but she feels her chest tighten. A family—he sees them as a family. Families are supposed to be forever, but she doesn’t know how to do forever. She’s never had a relationship last longer than a few weeks. How long is it going to be before one of them says something stupid and the other decides it’s not worth it? And isn’t he supposed to be taking the kid to the Jedi?

While she’s running full-tilt on this train of thought, Mando slides his arm around her shoulders and brushes his thumb over the nape of her neck. Her runaway train derails. An unexpected surge of love sweeps over her again, this time for both of them, and suddenly she’s thinking a family might not be such a bad thing. A little home somewhere. Maybe a farm, even though she hates farming. . . His warm, gentle touch makes her think these things might be possible, despite her every instinct.

“Oh by the way, the kid is used to sleeping with me, so I guess I’ll be taking this bed back,” he says matter-of-factly.

Oh. Disappointing. “Oh. Um. . .ok. Do you want the bigger bed then?”

“No, he doesn’t take up much room. We’ll be fine here.”

“All right, let me know if you change your mind.”

* * *

While Mando’s brushing his teeth, the kid wakes up grumpy. Cara tries to pick him up, but he’s having none of it. Instead he chews his fingers and grizzles.

“You want daddy? He’s in the bathroom.”

“DA!” the kid cries, making grabby hands toward the bathroom.

“Daddy will be right back.”

“Dadda!”

“Yes, that’s right. daddy. Daddy will be right back, I promise.” Cara picks the kid up and bounces him on her hip, while he squirms and babbles loud nonsense in her ear.

The bathroom door opens and Mando stands in the doorway, still brushing his teeth. The kid cries “DADDA!!” and pushes at Cara’s arm trying to get to Mando.

“Wha-?” Mando freezes, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

“He called you daddy!”

Mando blinks. “But—but—“

“I guess you’re daddy now. You’d better hurry up and finish brushing your teeth, cuz this kid’s gonna claw my arm off trying to get to you.”

Mando holds out his arm for the kid so Cara gladly passes him over. Cara would’ve thought Mando would be happy that the kid finally said something, but instead he’s got those farking baby porg eyes again, as he spits in the sink and rinses out his toothbrush while the kid tries to climb his head.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you glad he finally said a word?”

“I guess so.”

* * *

Cara’s bed feels huge without Mando in it. While she tries to focus on reading her book, she leaves her compartment open a crack, which means that she can hear Mando talking to the kid. This is completely accidental, of course. She’s not trying to listen, but Mando’s compartment is also not entirely closed, which means her eavesdropping is partially his fault.

“Hey, Ad’ika.”

_*Gurgles and cooing*_

“Yeah, that’s you! You’re my Ad’ika. My little one. And I’m your Buir.”

_“_ Dadda!” _*Random mouth noises*_

“Buir. Can you say that? _Buir_.”

_*Badaddabadaba*_

“That’s pretty close! Like this. . . Boo-eer.”

_*Giggling and lip smacking*_

“Ok, sure, kisses are good too. Thanks, Buddy.”

_*Babbling sounds*_

“I love you too, Ad’ika.”

The kid sighs and murmurs sleepily, “Dadda. . .”

* * *

For someone so tiny, the kid takes up a lot of space. By the next morning, he’s back to full strength, and he needs to _move_ , which isn’t easy in a tiny ship with two other people and way too much of their crap.

After breakfast Mando and the kid decide to play catch. Cara’s not sure which one of them came up with the idea, but they are both _highly_ _enthusiastic_ about it. Cara sits on her bed and tries to stay out of the way, because playing “Catch”, in this instance, means Mando gently tosses the ball to the kid, who stops it with the Force and wings it back across the cabin at just under light speed. Then Mando has to try to catch it, preferably not with his face, cuz they are using the metal ball, natch.

After Mando has narrowly missed getting hit in the head twice, the ball happens to fly close to Cara’s bed, so she sticks out her hand and catches it, without considering what a metal ball traveling at just under light speed would do to her bones. Damn that hurt, but there’s no way she’s going to show it. Instead she drops the ball on the bed and replaces it with the rubber ball she bought at the market on Eovu. She tosses it to the kid, who force-throws it back hard enough that it smacks into the wall with a loud _SQUEAK_. The kid’s eyes widen and his mouth drops open. Cara and Mando both freeze, thinking he’s going to get upset, but instead he claps his little hands and starts to giggle hysterically. Grinning, Mando scoops up the ball and squeezes it, and again the kid dissolves into laughter at the squeaking sound. Still grinning, Mando catches Cara’s eye just to share the moment, and Cara’s breath catches in her throat because the sweetness and joy radiating out from the two of them is almost overwhelming.

The game continues, and Cara goes back to trying to read her book. Several SQUEAKs later, she hears a deeper giggle mixed in with the kid’s higher pitch. Glancing up, she sees that the game of “catch” has devolved into a game of “keep-away”, wherein the kid sends the ball zinging all over the cabin while Mando tries (and fails) to catch it. Every time the ball caroms off a wall, the SQUEAK sets the kid to laughing again, which makes Mando giggle too. It’s so farking cute Cara has a hard time pretending not to listen so she doesn’t break whatever magic they’ve got going on.

A minute later the ball drops in her lap with a soft _squeak_. She looks up, surprised, to find Mando, still grinning, hands out waiting for her to join the game. Sure, why not. The kid can’t keep the ball away from both of them, can he?

Why yes, actually, he can.

* * *

As soon as they are all thoroughly worn out, Cara flops back down on her bed while Mando sits down in one of the chairs and kicks back with the kid on his chest. The kid falls asleep almost instantly, and a minute later Cara looks over to find Mando with his head back, eyes closed, one hand hanging down and the other on the kid’s back. Dammit, there’s that unexpected rush of love again. Even though she has never wanted kids, there’s something about a man holding a baby that’s just attractive. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the man in question is pretty attractive all on his own. The shape of his lips. His shy smile. The dark curls over his ears. Those stupid baby porg eyes. The little wrinkle between his eyebrows that never goes away, even when he’s sleeping. Cara can’t help herself, she leans in and kisses that wrinkle, lightly. As she pulls away, his eyes blink open and his mouth curves up into that shy smile, so now she’s gotta kiss him there too.

“Hi,” she says, rubbing her hand over his knee.

“Hi,” he responds, a little breathlessly.

“If you. uh. laid him down, would he stay asleep?”

“Maybe.”

Cara slides her hand up his thigh and wags her eyebrows at him. He bites his lip, looking to the bed then back at her with a widening smile. “It’s definitely worth a try.”

* * *

_Yada yada yada_

* * *


	16. Pillow talk

* * *

Yay, the kid is a good sleeper! Boo, Mando is _also_ a good sleeper. As soon as they are done, he immediately curls up on his side and his eyes slide shut.

“No, stay awake,” Cara says, patting his arm, “It’s time for pillow talk.”

His eyes flutter half-open again. “What’s that?” he says through a yawn.

“It’s when you lay back on your pillow and talk about nothing.”

Mando frowns. “I don’t know how to talk about nothing.”

“Well, I do. I’ll start.”

“Ok. Are we supposed to. . .snuggle?”

“There’s no ‘supposed to’. Whatever you want is fine. Do you want to snuggle?”

“I’ve never done it before, but. . . I’d like to try it. How do we do that?”

“Just hold still. I’m going to get closer.” She slides in so her body is laying against his. “Is this ok?”

“Are you kidding? That’s more than ok.”

“Ha! All right, lift your head up so I can put my arm under it.”

He obediently lifts up, and Cara slips her arm under so his head is resting against her shoulder. This puts his face quite close to her bare breast, which does not bother him, based on his expression. “Remember, you’re allowed to touch anything you want,” she reminds him.

“Ok. Right.” He wraps his arm over her stomach and curls his hand around the side of her breast. That’s quite nice.

“Comfy?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, so pillow talk. I’ll start. What’s your favorite color?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Just answer it.”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a favorite color.”

Cara huffs. Maybe this will be harder than she thought. Mando doesn’t seem to have much experience with any of the normal human shit. “Ok, fine. Ask me.”

“. . . What’s your favorite color?”

“Magenta.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because when I was a kid, we had a tooka with a magenta tongue. That tooka loved me and followed me everywhere. My favorite thing was lying on the beach, and that tooka would lick my face with her magenta tongue. So that’s why I like magenta.”

“Oh.” Mando’s thumb strokes along the side of her breast, which is more than a little distracting. “That’s a good story.”

“Thanks. Your turn.”

Mando frowns, she can see the wrinkle between his eyebrows deepen. “I don’t know what to tell. I don’t have any stories.”

“I bet you do, you just don’t know it. Um. . . Did you have any pets when you were a kid?”

“We had a fish.”

“Ok. Tell me a story about the fish.”

“I don’t remember much, but, um. . . so. . . I asked my mother if I could take the fish to bed with me. She said no but I didn’t understand why not. I think I thought the fish was lonely in the tank all by itself. So one night I got the fish out of the tank and was sneaking down the hall to take it to bed when she caught me and made me put it back.”

“Well, that’s good.”

She’s about to tell him ‘good story’, when he continues, in the same matter-of-fact voice, “That fish died anyway. When the droids came to our city, they bombed our house. We ran out but my father wouldn’t let me take the fish with us. I think I was more upset about the fish dying than I was about my parents.”

“. . . Oh.” Well shit. That got dark fast. Nice reminder that there’s a lot of horrible shit in Mando’s past that he has probably never really processed.

While she’s thinking this, he pulls back a little and looks up into her face. His mouth twists, and she realizes belatedly that she should probably smile at him or something so he knows it’s ok. “Sorry, that was depressing. We’re supposed to be talking about nothing.”

“It’s ok. Come back here.” She pulls on his arm until he lays back down. She runs her hand over his shoulder and finds that all the muscles are tense, so she massages the junction between his neck and shoulder, smoothing out the knots with her thumb. “I didn’t know your parents were killed by droids. That must be why you’re afraid of them.”

“I’m not afraid of them, I just don’t trust them.”

“Bullshit. You’re afraid of them, admit it.”

Mando shrugs. “Ok, yes, I’m afraid of them. What are you afraid of?”

Commitment, Cara thinks, but she says, “Spiders.”

“Really? I’m not afraid of spiders.”

“Good. You can kill all the spiders, and I’ll protect you from the droids.”

Mando chuckles. “Works for me. I think I got the better end of that bargain.”

“Good. It’s a deal.” Mando’s shoulder has relaxed now, so Cara slips her hand into his hair and lets the curls slide through her fingers. “New topic: What’s your favorite food?”

“Um. . . I uh. . . I liked those eggs you made me.”

“You did? I couldn’t tell.” She gently works her fingers through the thicket of curls to slide along his scalp. “What about the flatbread sandwich?”

“It was spicy.”

“Did you like it?”

“I’m not used to spicy stuff. I don’t really cook much. I just. . .um. . .” his voice trails off. Uh-oh, she’s losing him. “That feels nice,” he mumbles after a minute.

“What, me stroking your hair?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve never had someone stroke your hair before?”

“No. How would they? I like it. Keep going.”

So Cara keeps weaving her fingers through the curls and stroking his scalp. His head is getting heavier and heavier. She thinks he must be asleep when he suddenly says, “We can start searching for the Jedi in the morning.”

_How the hell are we supposed to do that_ , Cara thinks. No, probably don’t say that during pillow talk. Also probably best to wait until later to bring up the fact that she never actually promised to search for the farking Jedi in the first place. As she’s trying to think of something noncommittal to say, she realizes Mando’s breathing has evened out and his arm across her stomach is heavy and limp. Asleep again.

She keeps stroking his curls while she frets about what to do next. Part of her, the cynical part, would prefer just to get it over with. Drop Mando and the kid off on the nearest planet with a few credits, let him find another ride. He’s resourceful, right? He can take care of himself, armor or no armor. She can reclaim her space, go back to her job and her life. . . but then she wouldn’t have Mando’s curls to stroke, or the sweet weight of his head on her shoulder. Goodness, this is a dilemma. Also her arm is falling asleep, so there’s that.

As she’s pondering all of this, she hears a chime from the cockpit—incoming message, and she has a pretty good idea who it’s from. She decides she’s gonna check it later, cuz right now she is busy snuggling and worrying. That’s two things already. She doesn’t have the mental energy for a third, and besides, her arm is trapped under a sleeping Mando, so she’s stuck here. What a shame. Karga will just have to wait. Not that she has anything to tell him anyway.

Five minutes later, she hears the kid babbling from the other bed. It starts out soft, then rises in intensity and volume, finishing with “Dadda! Dadda!” She waits for a second, hoping he’ll go back to sleep, but nope.

“DADDAAA!! DADDA!!”

Mando doesn’t stir. Cara pats him gently on the arm. “Hey Din.” He doesn’t move, so she pats him again. “Din, he’s calling you.”

He shifts against her shoulder. “Huh?”

“The kid. He’s calling you.”

From the other bed, the kid calls again “Daaaaadaa!”

Mando doesn’t move. “Mm. I think you should have to go get him,” he says sleepily.

“He’s calling you.”

“You’re the one who taught him to say Daddy.”

Cara pushes against Mando’s shoulder. “If I show up instead of you, he’s like to blow up the ship out of spite.”

Mando huffs. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

He sits up and Cara immediately misses the warmth. As he’s sitting on the side of the bed pulling on his jammie pants, she watches the muscles moving in his perfect back. Trapezius, latissimus dorsi, scapula. . .There’s so much to admire that it takes her a second to realize what’s missing—the scars have disappeared, both the thin white whip marks and the sigil Xi’an carved into his back. The kid must’ve healed those too, when they were in that golden bubble that Mando somehow couldn’t even see. Mando saved the kid, and the kid saved him right back. Cara's vision blurs from unexpected tears.

While he’s getting the kid, Cara quickly gathers her own clothes. As she’s pulling on her shirt, she hears Mando saying softly, “Buir. Say boo-eer.”

“Dadda!!”

Mando sighs, “Yeah, ok. I’m daddy.”

Then he’s walking back across the cabin, snuggling the kid against his bare chest and kissing him on the head, and Cara has to groan because her ovaries start telling her lies about how nice it would be to have babies with him.

Mando looks up through his lashes, chin still resting on the kid’s fuzzy head. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, I’m just having a little argument with my ovaries.”

“What does that mean?”

The kid squirms, so Mando sways back and forth, rocking him until he snuggles in again. _See what a good daddy he would be_ , her ovaries whisper. . . _Oh gods, just_ ** _stop_** _!_

“They’re trying to convince me I should settle down and have lots of babies with you.”

Mando’s head pops up, eyes wide with alarm. “Huh?”

Cara snorts. “Don’t worry, so far I’m winning.”

Mando swallows hard. His eyes dart away. “Oh. That’s. . . good.”

“Yes, very good.” She scoots over on the bed to make room for him, so he lays back down with the kid on his chest. He’s laying very still and obviously being careful not to touch her, which doesn’t surprise her. One more crack like that, and he’ll be _asking_ to be let off at the nearest planet, she’s sure.

Of course, it only takes Mando about thirty seconds to fall asleep again. The kid, on the other hand, is wide awake now. He climbs up to Mando’s head and pats him on the cheek.

“Hm? No, go to sleep, ‘Di’ka,” Mando mumbles.

The kid pats both cheeks and babbles nonsense. When Mando’s only response is a vague pat on the back, the kid clambers down off the side of the bed. The next time Cara sees him, he’s climbing up on top of the counter and opening the door to the pantry.

“Um. . . Din?”

Mando lifts his head just as the kid’s butt disappears into the pantry cupboard.

“Hey, you hungry buddy? Ok.” Mando sits up and scrubs at his tangled curls. “Ok, I’m up.”

Cara gets one more glimpse of his unblemished back before he closes the bed compartment. She flops back on the pillow and zones out listening to the domestic noises of the clinking of dishes, Mando’s soft murmured voice and the kid’s higher-pitched responses. The soothing sounds quickly lull her back to sleep.

* * *

The smell of coffee wakes her up again, over an hour later. She opens the compartment to find the kid sitting on the table sipping broth from a small cup that she doesn’t even remember owning. He is surrounded by wrappers from pickled coodler roe protein bars, and sticky crumbs cling to every surface including his face and hands. Mando has a washcloth and it looks like he is searching for an opening to dive in and wipe up. He's got his shirt back on. Shame.

“Oh, sorry, did we wake you up?”

“The smell of coffee did.”

“Right. Here you go.” Mando hands her a mug of fresh-ish looking coffee and a starblossomprotein bar. He is sweaty, there’s hair hanging limply in his face and a smudge of something that might be jam filling smeared across one cheek. He's gonna have to wipe that off quick or she might die from the cuteness. Maybe she could lick it off. “Sorry, I wanted to fix you breakfast but we don’t have much in the pantry.”

“That’s ok, thanks.” Cara counts the wrappers surrounding the kid and decides a trip to a market needs to happen sooner rather than later. Luckily there’s a great one on Chundaar, which happens to be only about an hour away if they get moving.

Before she can float the idea to Mando (who will no doubt disagree), the kid finishes his broth and starts banging the cup on the table and shrieking nonsense at the top of his lungs. Cara decides she might as well go ahead and compose a message to Karga in the relative quiet of the cockpit, and maybe start drifting toward Chundaar while she’s at it. She nods pleasantly to Mando, who barely acknowledges her as he tries to wrangle the kid to wipe his face.

In the cockpit, she takes her time setting a slow course toward Chundaar while sipping coffee. The message awaits, but her stomach is churning too much to deal with it now. After she drains the last swallow of her coffee, shedecides can’t put it off any longer. Time to find out exactly how fired she is. She puts on her headphones so Mando won’t hear (not that he could over the kid screeching) and cues up the message that came in earlier, which is, as she expected, from Karga. On the holo, it looks like he’s sitting at his desk in his office.

“Hello D!” he booms with a broad smile. “I know you said you were on a side errand, which is just fine, but I have an important job for you. If you can believe it, our recent friends want to put out a marker on Mando!” Karga’s mouth is pulled back into a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Our clients are very eager to get their hands on him, so I wanted to give the job to my most experienced hunter. You are the only one I trust to do the right thing.”

Cara hits the control to pause the holo and blinks at Karga’s face. That smile is definitely forced. Is that a shadow of a bruise under his eye? She leans in closer, and notices that his office behind him is a mess: books open on the floor, a statue broken, throw pillow cut open and stuffing pulled out. He called her D, not Dune as he usually would. He also called her his “most experienced hunter”, which they both know is a lie, given that his actual most experienced hunter is currently down in her cabin babbling baby talk while a toddler tries to climb his head. So this message isn’t so much a job offer as a veiled warning that the imps are after Mando, and maybe a request for her to help him.

As she’s sitting there pondering what her next move should be, she has an awful realization: The Imps know someone killed Xi’an and her crew and took the kid, which they assume must have been Mando. They also know that he escaped in a ship (HER ship, although they must think it’s Mando’s ship), since it would have been the only one leaving Rathirria at that time. Logical conclusion: they know her drive signature and are probably tracking them right now.

Heart pounding, Cara examines the navigational display, that shows them utterly alone. Suddenly the lack of traffic around them seems ominous, since it means they are out here by themselves, with their drive signature trail to guide the Imps to them like a beacon.

Chundaar hangs in front of them, bright and inviting, a perfect place to hide, except their drive signature would lead the Imps right to it. They’re going to have to double-back and lay a false trail, then get the hell out of this system, and fast.


	17. Sand

* * *

Cara calls down to Mando, “You guys buckle up” in the calmest voice she can muster. Mando must’ve seen through it because before she can engage the drive, he’s up the ladder, with the wide-eyed kid clinging to his shirtfront. He doesn’t ask any questions, just slides into the navigation seat and buckles himself in. One arm wraps protectively around the kid while his other hand manipulates the navigation display.

She engages the drive at max toward Chundaar. It’s not until they reach the orbital shipping lanes that they encounter traffic. Cara slows the engines to match the flow of traffic and slots the ship into the lane. She glances at Mando, expecting he’ll be curious what’s going on, but he’s bent over the navigational panel, while bouncing the kid on his knee. Five minutes later, half-way through the orbit, a heading pops up on her screen, sent from the navigation console. It completes the orbit, then perfectly retraces their course back to the hyperspace lane.

“Thanks,” Cara says tersely as she locks it in. Mando doesn’t respond, but she hears the kid babbling.

“Not now, Ad’ika,” Mando says. Cara glances over to see the kid standing on Mando’s lap, patting his face with sticky claws. Mando takes his hands off the navigation panel long enough to sit him back down again. The kid grumbles and squirms, but Mando wraps an arm around his waist to keep him there.

Almost back to the hyperspace lane, another heading pops up, sent by Mando: three stops down the lane, exiting to a busy sector with several populated planets and moons where their drive signature would disappear in the traffic. Sounds good to her, since she hasn’t even had a chance to think about where to go next. As she’s laying it in, she feels little claws clamber onto her knee, and then the kid is standing in her lap.

“Sit down, Bubba,” she says, reaching around him to change their course to enter hyperspace. The kid’s sticky little fingers pat her cheek. “Seriously, kid, I’m busy.” She tries to give him back to Mando, but he clings to her sleeve, so she impatiently sits him down on her knee and secures him with one hand while she readies the ship for hyperspace with the other.

Three stops later they exit back into normal space with a lurch, right into a busy transport lane. As she’s trying to decide which way to go next, the kid stands up on her lap again and grabs her face. “Stop, Deeka.” She sits him back down, then examines the display again and suddenly one name stands out: Niba. She’s never been there before, but she’s heard of it. It has a nice mix of populated cities, small towns, and forests. Best beaches in the sector, the database infodump crows. Also, NO IMPS, so that’s a huge plus. Enough traffic that their drive signature will be masked. Ok, fine, they’re going to Niba. Cara doesn’t even bother to clear it with Mando, she just lays in the course.

“Ok, hang onto something,” she says, putting the kid back onto Mando’s knee. Funny, he goes easily this time. What a weird kid. Mando wraps his arms around the kid and braces his feet while she engages the drive. His eyes are tight and his mouth is a hard line. She’s sure he’s got questions, but he doesn’t say anything. As soon as they are underway and the ship has stabilized, Cara looks around to discover they have both disappeared back down the ladder. She can hear the kid babbling over the clinking of dishes as Mando starts cleaning up.

Cara chews her fingernail. They’ll be at Niba in about an hour, but then what? Spend the rest of their lives there? Try to get a different ship that the Imps can’t track? _Somehow find the Jedi??_ Yeah, she doesn’t have much hope on that one. Or, a part of her brain reminds her, she could drop off Mando and the kid and high-tail it out of there. The Imps are looking for Mando, not her. Despite what Mando thinks, she didn’t actually promise to help him past finding the kid.

No, she’s not going to do that. She can’t ditch them, at least not yet. Right now she needs to find them a place to hide temporarily until they figure things out.

Cara searches the database and maps while autopilot takes them into orbit. Northern hemisphere seems the most diverse. Lots of interplanetary traffic, plenty of cities and towns, along with wooded areas they can disappear in for a while. Ooh, a nice market in Dracuu—mid-sized town, plenty of traffic, easy to get in and out without drawing any attention. She zooms in and finds a wooded area outside of town. Near the shipping lanes but lightly trafficked enough that they won’t attract attention when they land. Lots of thick tree cover so they won’t be visible from the air. The fact that it’s a short walk from a nice sandy beach is an added bonus.

As they enter orbit, she realizes she can’t hear the kid anymore, just Mando puttering around in the cabin. She heads down the ladder and finds him with his back to her at the sink, drying dishes. The kid is asleep in a heap on the table, surrounded by more wrappers. His mouth is ringed with crumbs. Damn, she wishes they had been able to stop at Chundaar to resupply because that has to be the last of the kid’s favorite protein bars.

Cara sits on the ladder. Mando turns around, dishtowel in hand, and raises his eyebrows. The skin around his eyes is still tight, and she can see the muscle at his temple working from grinding his teeth. “Want to tell me what that was about? I assume they’re tracking us.”

“Well. . . The bad news is the Imps are forcing Karga to put out a marker on you.”

_Baby porg eyes alert! Fix it! Fix it!_ Cara continues, “The good news is he gave the marker to me.” She hopes that will bring the anxiety levels down but _nope_. Time for another mood-lightener! “So I guess I gotta bring you in,” she quips.

Mando’s towel goes still on the half-dried dish in his hands. His eyes narrow. His gaze flits to the kid and then to the counter like he’s looking for something to defend himself with. _Shit_. Backpedal! “I’m joking!” she reassures him. He does not look reassured. “Of course I’m not going to bring you in! Good grief, Din.”

He lets out a quick breath and his shoulders visibly relax. “Oh—yeah, I knew that. Of course.”

“But we do need to figure out what we’re going to do next. Right now I think we’re safe, at least for a while. There’s enough traffic coming and going from Niba that our drive signature would be difficult to track. I think we should land and lay low for a while. We need to resupply anyway.” She casts a meaningful glance at the pile of wrappers surrounding the kid.

“Agreed.”

“But then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you have any leads on the Jedi?”

“No.”

“Well, where should we look?”

“I don’t know.”

“How are we going to find his people then?” Ok, that question maybe had a bit more heat than Cara intended. Mando blinks. His head turns and lowers a little so he’s watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“I _don’t know_.” His voice cracks. His tight gaze drops to the kid, then the floor. He swallows hard.

Cara chews her lip. She knows she’s upsetting him, but she’s frustrated, and she needs more than “I don’t know” because it’s her life on the line here too. She has an idea but she doesn't like it, mainly because it would be bad for _her_. “How about Luke Skywalker?”

“What about him?”

“He’s a Jedi. He can help the kid.”

“Leader of the New Republic? No thanks.”

“Maybe he has a training school.”

Now Mando’s got the heat in his voice. “I’m not turning my kid over to the New Republic. I don’t trust them.”

“Why not?”

“They destroyed Mandalore and killed most of my clan!” Mando spits out hoarsely, then breaks off when a thin cry comes from the kid, who is sitting up on the table, wailing piteously and fisting his tiny claws in his shirt. Mando’s voice turns gentle. “Hey—hey, Ad’ika.” He scoops the kid up and rocks him, refusing to meet Cara’s eye. He’s wrong and Cara knows it. The New Republic didn’t destroy Mandalore, the _Old_ Republic did, but they were trying to get rid of Maul and his puppet government. She’s not sure anymore how much of the “education” she got in the Corps was unbiased history and how much was propaganda, but that much she knows for sure. She wants to try to continue the conversation, but Mando is snuggling a sobbing kid right now. A kid who is wearing an enormous, snot- and crumb-covered t-shirt and nothing else. A kid who is going to get hungry again soon, and they are out of the protein bars he likes. They’ll have to fight about going to the New Republic later, because right now the need to hide and resupply is more urgent.

“Ok, I’m willing to drop that for now. Right now we need a place to hide. The northern hemisphere of Niba has some possibilities. Plenty of traffic to cover our drive trail, but also forested areas to disappear into. Ok?”

Mando nods against the kid’s head. Good so far, but she knows he’s not going to like this next part.

“We also need to go shopping. We are almost out of food, and the kid needs clothes. According to the database, there’s a market in a mid-sized town called Dracuu. What do you think?”

Mando doesn’t say anything, but his arms tighten around the kid, who has stopped crying and is now watching Cara with interest.

“Maybe we’ll get you a toy!” Cara says to the kid, which is blatant manipulation, but she doesn’t care. The kid squeals with glee and bounces up and down in Mando’s arms. Mando’s mouth twists, half-smile and half-annoyance.

“All right, but let’s find a place to hide the ship first. I want to make sure we’re safe.”

Cara grins. That’s the ticket. “I know just the spot.”

* * *

Cara makes an orbit before dropping into the atmosphere, then doubles back a few times to hide their trail. She knows that she’s gone far enough when Mando’s jaw relaxes. On the next pass, she drops down and snuggles them right in to the sweet spot she had found on the map, just inside the treeline near the empty beach. There’s even a stream trickling past their hiding place. The kid’s eyes widen in wonder when he sees the lush greenery.

Before she even finishes the landing sequence, the kid is standing next to the door, bouncing on his toes, ears quivering in excitement. Mando catches the kid and hands him to Cara.

“Hang on, Ad’ika. I have to make sure the area is safe first.”

So Cara stands in the doorway and bounces an increasingly impatient kid on her hip, trying unsuccessfully to keep him quiet, while Mando, hat pulled down over his forehead, prowls around securing the perimeter. When he comes back through the dappled sunlight, his gait is looser, and he’s even smiling. “Fresh water in the stream,” he says, “We should flush out and refill the tanks.”

Cara nods agreeably, pretending she hadn’t already noticed that. She’s planning to go put her toes in the sand on that gorgeous deserted beach before any water-tank flushing and refilling happens, and the kid obviously agrees with her.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach first,” she proposes. Mando’s mouth opens like he’s going to argue, but then his gaze falls to the kid who is happily bouncing in her arms making grabby hands toward the open doorway, and his mouth quirks up.

“All right, just a quick walk.”

As soon as they get to the sand, Cara is about to set the kid down, but Mando takes him and sets him on his shoulders. The kid squirms unhappily.

“Why not put him down?”

“He’ll get covered in sand.”

“So what? It’s what kids do.”

Mando’s gaze flits to the pounding surf. “It’s not safe.”

“He’ll be perfectly fine. We’re right here.”

The kid is hopping up and down on Mando’s shoulders, claws fisted into Mando’s hair, whining and babbling his displeasure. With a sigh, Mando sets the kid down on the sand. The kid looks around like he’s not sure what to do next, so Cara sits down beside him and pulls her boots off while he watches with interest.

“Come on, Bubba, let’s take a walk.” She picks up her shoes and walks barefoot on the damp sand while he toddles along in front of her. She can hear Mando struggling behind her, and when she looks back, she realizes he is still wearing his boots.

“Take your boots off,” Cara says, “It’s easier to walk in the sand barefoot.”

He frowns at his feet from under the brim of his cap. “Haven’t you ever walked on a beach before?” she asks.

“Not barefoot.” He looks so uncomfortable. Dang, why is he so cute when he’s uncomfortable?

“Try it,” she urges, “I guarantee you it’s fun.”

“I don’t care about having fun.”

The kid is starting to whine impatiently, so Cara scoops him and tosses him in the air. His musical giggle floats on the sunbeams. “We like fun, don’t we Bubba?” When she looks back at Mando, his frown has morphed into a fond smile. _Got him!_ “Come on, have fun with us!”

Grinning like he’s trying not to, Mando sits down and pulls his boots and socks off. His eyebrows furrow as he wiggles his toes in the sand.

“Better?”

“It’s ok.”

Cara sets the kid back down, then offers Mando her hand and pulls to his feet. “See, it’s fun. Walks on the beach are my favorite,” she says, leading him along by the hand. He follows, a half-smile still tugging at his lips. Gods, she loves that little shy smile. She wants to kiss it, but before she can, the smile disappears and Mando has to spoil it by talking.

“We should consider trying to find a different ship,” he says seriously. Cara is not in the mood for serious.

“Ok, sure,” she says, trying to hint that she wants to drop it. Mando doesn’t get the hint.

“Did you see a shipyard in the database?”

“Didn’t notice one. We can look later.”

“We can probably get a good price for yours, if I fix that squeaky pilot’s seat,” Mando continues. Cara can’t stand it anymore. They are on a gorgeous beach and the sun is shining. This is a time to savor, not talk shop. But that’s not stopping Mando. He launches into an explanation of other repairs he’ll need to complete before her rig is ready for trade-in. Apparently she has a leak where the Artesiatic dampener meets the coupling motivator. Who knew? Mando, evidently. In her head, her mother’s voice reminds her that eyerolls are rude and unbecoming.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” she informs him. Mando breaks off mid-sentence. His eyes widen and his lips part.

“Ok. Why?” he breathes, but she doesn’t answer. Instead she pulls him in and kisses him on those sweet lips. Oh, that’s nice. Blissful silence.

Before Cara can figure out how to distract him next, they are interrupted by the kid babbling. She looks down to find he has plopped himself down on his little butt and is picking up handfuls of wet sand. She thinks maybe he is going to try to build something, but instead he puts a fistful in his mouth.

“No, Ad’ika, spit that out,” Mando says sternly.

The kid does not spit it out. Instead he swallows and picks up another fistful. Cara very helpfully suppresses her laughter, but not quite well enough apparently because Mando shoots her a _stop it!_ glare, and damned if that isn’t cute too.

“No eating sand.” Mando uncurls the kid’s fist and brushes the sand off his fingers. “If you’re hungry, we have real food.”

The kid defiantly licks his fingers. Instead of picking up another handful of sand, he pushes himself to his feet and starts toddling toward the ocean.

“No, we’re not going in the water,” Mando says firmly. The kid ignores him. Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Mando shoves his boots into Cara’s hand, peels off his jacket then trots after him, doing a little hop while he rolls up his pant legs on the way. He catches up to the kid at the water’s edge and grabs his hand tightly as the waves lap around their feet. When a bigger wave comes rolling in, Mando takes a step back to keep from getting wet. The kid whines and makes grabby hands toward the water but Mando shakes his head and picks him up. “It’s not safe out there.”

Cara looks down at her hand. She’s the only one here who knows how to have fun at the beach; heck, probably the only one who knows how to swim. Why is she standing on the beach holding the shoes? Shaking her head, Cara drops the shoes on the dry sand and sprints into the surf. “Come on, let’s play!” she shouts as she runs past Mando and the kid. They both gape at her, so she goes back, grabs Mando’s hand, and pulls them into the water with her.

“Hey!” Mando yelps, pulling back. A wave hits him at waist level, soaking them both and spraying the kid in the face. The kid squeals. Mando gives him a concerned look, but then the kid breaks into uncontrollable laughter. Mando’s scowl turns up at the corners.

“AAH! AAH!” the kid shouts, grabbing for the next wave. Mando takes a tentative step deeper into the water, holds the kid out and lets the water hit him in the face again. The kid claps his hands and laughs in delight. Mando chuckles along with him. As another wave hits, golden sunlight catches the water droplets, which spread out like little diamonds suspended in the sky. They hang there for what seems like a ridiculously long time. Cara’s not sure if it’s real, or if it’s another illusion generated by the kid, but she doesn’t care. The joy is contagious, and she’s happy to catch it.


	18. Spar

By the time they are finished playing in the ocean, they are all wet and sandy, and the kid’s eyelids and ears are drooping. Mando sits down on the beach, wraps the kid in his jacket and holds him snug against his chest, where he sighs and makes contented little snuffling sounds into Mando’s shirtfront. It’s not long before he’s sound asleep. Mando kisses the top of his head, and Cara has to bite her lip to keep from making contented little sounds herself, cuz the back of Mando’s neck is tanned from the sun, and there’s sand in his tousled curls, and merciful heavens they’re adorable.

And then he has to go and ruin it by opening his fool mouth again. This time the topic is the untrustworthiness of the New Republic and how they are basically indistinguishable from the Empire. His main points are that both the Republic and the Empire require everyone to fall in line with their goals, and something about interference in elections and governments and forcing unwilling planets to join, and blah blah blah Cara’s not listening.

“Well, that was the Old Republic. This is the New Republic,” Cara points out reasonably.

“They’re not different. Old or New, they're never going to allow planets to make their own decisions.”

“If everyone doesn’t join, it’s hardly a republic."

“It should be voluntary. That’s the problem. Mandalore didn’t want to join, so the Jedi destroyed it. That’s how they operate.” Mando’s grinding his teeth again, and his arms have tightened around the kid while he expounds on his thesis. He needs to take his mind off this crap because they are sitting on a beautiful beach and the sun is shining.

“Hey, let’s spar,” Cara says impulsively.

Mando breaks off mid-rant and blinks at her. “What?”

“Let’s spar. Come on, get up.”

“I’m holding a baby.”

“Who is asleep. You can put him down and spar with me. It’ll be fun.” She holds her hand out to Mando, who silently contemplates it for a second, then his mouth quirks up into a half-grin.

“You don’t stand a chance.”

“Oh yeah? Put your money where your mouth is, buster.”

The grin widens. “You’re on.” He carefully lays the kid down in the shade, then lets Cara haul him to his feet. “Loser has to wash the dinner dishes,” he says, brushing the sand off his hands and curling them into loose fists. What dishes? All they have left are protein bars.

“Better get that washrag ready, old man.”

Cara loves competition. That rush of adrenaline. The exhilaration of getting the upper hand. Watching for her partner’s weaknesses and exploiting them. Controlling the distance, watching for strikes, even taking a few hits so she has the opportunity to counterstrike. It’s all good.

After the first few strikes and blocks, it becomes apparent that Mando doesn’t know how to fight without armor and a helmet, because he keeps trying to block kicks with his bare forearms, which must hurt—she’s not sorry, because he has to learn—and he leaves his head far too exposed. Cara’s good at using her opponent’s weaknesses against them, and this particular weakness should be fairly easy to exploit. She watches for an opening while her body is occupied with the interchange of strike—counterstrike—inside kick—block—hook—counter—backhand—step back—fake—jab—cross—defensive kick—step back—fake—twist—hook—step back—kick—

Mando drops his arm to block the kick, which leaves his face exposed, and Cara reacts on instinct. Closing the gap, she throws an elbow strike to the chin, which lands somewhat harder than she intended, but she’s too into the rhythm to stop now. He grunts and steps back, and she takes advantage of his momentum to drive a shoulder into his solar plexus and take him down onto his back. He lands hard in the sand, which is soft enough that he can’t roll with the motion. Swinging her leg over so she’s straddling his chest, she pins his wrists to the ground. _Yes! Triumph!_ A wave of adrenaline surges over her. Her heart is pounding, as much from exhilaration of winning as from exertion. Some of her hair has come loose from her ponytail and is hanging down around both of their heads.

Mando’s sweaty and disheveled and out of breath. His eyes are wide and his mouth is slightly open. She can feel his rib cage jerking up and down between her thighs. Gods, he looks delicious, and she’s _starving_. She’s going to eat him up, starting with those sweet lips, then maybe she’ll take a taste of that neck, where she can see his pulse pounding under the skin.

As she leans in for the kiss, she notices the rising panic in his eyes, and suddenly realizes, oh.

OH.

He’s got some trauma related to being held down and kissed. Maybe this isn’t a good idea. Maybe she should—

Yeah. Ok. She shouldn’t hold him down and kiss him. That’s a really bad idea.

She loosens her grip on his wrists, preparing to let him up, and he takes advantage of the movement to twist his hips, hook a leg around her waist, and flip her over onto her back. Cara doesn’t fight him, just lets him take her down. He straddles her, pinning her wrists to the ground, and she lays still in the sand and acquiesces, waiting for what he’s going to do next, because she knows she scared him, and she’s afraid that whatever she could say would make it worse. For a long second, he silently glares at her. He’s breathing hard through his nose, lips firmly shut, and his eyes are _intense_.

Finally he pushes himself to his feet and stands with clenched fists, still breathing hard, then turns and strides away barefoot into the woods.

Shit. SHIT! Cara lets her head drop back onto the sand and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes hard enough that she sees stars. She REALLY screwed this up. Dammit! She’s going to have to go after him and make this right. How? An apology, for starters. After that. . ? No idea.

While she’s laying there gathering her thoughts, she hears the kid whimpering. He sits up and looks around, obviously for Mando, who is no longer in sight. His whimpers grow a little frantic around the edges. Cara sighs and pushes herself to her feet.

“Let’s go find him, huh? Maybe he’ll talk to me if I’m carrying you.”

She scoops up the kid, who clutches a fistful of her shirt in his dirty little claws and presses his snotty nose into her shoulder. “Yeah, thanks. That’s great,” she says, patting him on the back. She awkwardly picks up both pairs of boots in the other arm and sets off to find Mando. Luckily he didn’t go far. It’s not too long before she finds him sitting on a flat rock near the ship with his back to her, shoulders hunched and head bowed.

As soon as the kid spies him, he cries, “Dadda!” and bounces in her arms. Mando turns, tucking something into his pocket. His eyes are red but dry. Was he crying? Hard to tell. She hopes not. She already feels like a complete shit for scaring him. Knowing that she made him cry wouldn’t help. It also doesn't help to notice the purpling bruise along his jawbone. Mando’s only looking at the kid, not Cara. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t exactly feel like making eye contact right now either.

“Hey, Ad’ika,” he says softly. He holds out his arms and Cara deposits the kid in them. He immediately wraps the kid up in a tight embrace, pressing his nose against the top of the kid’s fuzzy head. Cara chews the inside of her lip while she tries to compose her apology in her head. Just a plain “I wasn't going to rape you”? Ha ha no. Try to describe what she was thinking? Also a bad idea, because she was thinking how much she wanted to eat him up. Explain that she thought he was into being dominated? No, that puts the blame on him.

Before she can put her words together, he blurts out, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He shakes his head, brows furrowed in distress. “I—I shouldn’t have reacted that way,” he says, his voice muffled against the kid’s head. The skin around his eyes is getting redder. “I didn’t mean to. I don't know why I reacted like that.” 

"Really? I think I do."

Mando's shoulders jerk in. He scrunches his eyes shut and presses his face into the kid’s fuzzy hair. Cara melts. She sits down beside him on the rock and looks over his hunched shoulders, the curve of his back, his bowed neck, which is still flecked with sand. She feels like absolute shit for making him cry. Her eyes are burning. The sun is gone and all the color has drained out of the sky. “I’m so sorry, Din. I should’ve realized how you would feel about being pinned like that.”

Mando shrugs, unconvinced.

“You have a right not to be touched if you don’t want to.”

Mando brings his head up and meets her gaze. “I don’t mind you touching me. I really don’t,” he says earnestly, “I just—I felt trapped and I couldn’t figure out how to get you to stop.”

“I’ll always stop if you ask me, I promise. I will never do anything to you without your permission.”

“Thank you.” The corner of his mouth tilts up into a half-grin. “Can I kiss you?”

Cara’s answering grin is wobbly, because the sun is shining again, and the kid is giggling, and the jungle around them is filled with vivid shades of green, and red, and orange, and magenta. “Always,” she breathes.

* * *

Mando has exactly one clean shirt left, which means that after baths in the stream, the kid ends up wearing one of Cara’s pajama tops. It has little flowers all over it and a row of lace around the hem, not that he cares. After five minutes it is so bedraggled and filthy that Cara is sure it will never be the same again. Apparently they will ALL need new clothes tomorrow.

“Dinner” that night is the last of the protein bars, along with a few berries that the infodump assured them were edible, although they are sour and hard as little orange pebbles. They drag the table and chairs out onto the ground to eat, and when they are finished with their pitiful little meal, Mando dutifully recycles the wrappers and throws the berry hulls into the forest. “I lost the bet, so I’m washing the dishes,” he reminds her when she tries to help.

“There aren’t any dishes,” she says, gesturing around at the empty table.

“A bet is a bet.”

“Ok, fine. I’ll wash the dishes tomorrow, after we go to the market and get some real food.”

Mando’s mouth twists. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do that.”

“Well, if you want to live on these berries,” she says, holding one up. Mando’s lip curls in distaste. “And go around naked” (that one she wouldn’t mind, actually) “then I guess we don’t need to go.”

“Maybe you could just go.”

“Uh-uh. I am not choosing clothes for you two. You could go by yourself if you wanted.”

His eyes widen in alarm. “Um. . . I don’t think—I mean—I wouldn’t know what to buy.”

“I can give you a list,” Cara says implacably. Mando swallows hard. She knows she’s taken it too far when the baby porg eyes come back and he starts chewing on his lip. “Or we could all go together,” she suggests.

“Yeah, ok. That’s a good idea.” Of course it’s a good idea. Cara always has the best ideas.

When clean-up is finished, Mando gives the kid a stick and tries to teach him how to sword-fight.

“Put your feet like this, Ad’ika,” Mando says seriously. The kid babbles nonsense and chews on the end of the stick.

“See, like this.” He takes the kid’s feet and tries to move them into fighting stance. The kid hops on one foot, then the other, and ends up crouched like a frog. “Um. . .Yeah, ok, good enough. Now hold the sword—I mean, stick—like this.” He moves the kid’s arm to proper “en garde” stance and steps back.

“Ok, let’s parry,” he says, tapping the kid’s stick with his own. The kid thinks this is great fun, especially when he realizes he can use the Force to yank the stick right out of Mando’s hand and send it flying across the clearing. Cara wishes she had a holo of the surprised expression on Mando’s face when he suddenly finds himself disarmed. Hearing the kid babbling what almost sounds like “GOTCHA!”, and Mando responding by bursting out laughing, is worth all the credits in the galaxy.

Cara sits back and closes her eyes and listens to them giggling and stomping around. This is temporary, she reminds herself. They’re going to find the kid’s people, so he’ll be safe and the Imps will stop hunting him. Mando is going to go back to. . . who knows what?—Mando’ing, maybe? And Cara’s going to get back to work. She has to.

Something hits her in the hand. She opens her eyes to find a stick resting next to the rock she’s sitting on. When she looks up, she sees Mando watching her expectantly. The kid is jumping up and down in excitement, and the evening sun is filtering through the trees, bathing them both in a golden light.

It’s TEMPORARY, she tells herself sternly. Her ovaries beg to disagree.

* * *

When Cara wakes up the next morning, Mando’s bed is open, and he and the kid aren’t in it. She looks around sleepily, and realizes she can hear noises outside: the kid babbling, and then the sound of power tools. What the heck?

She goes to the door to find Mando sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding a piece of her farking ship in his lap. He’s got her toolbox contents spread out around him (why did she show him where that was again?). The kid is sitting across from him, chewing on a spanner. He’s still wearing her nightshirt, except now the lace is falling off the hem and the sleeve is torn.

“What’s going on?” Cara says, pushing her hair out of her eyes and frowning at the ring of grease around the kid’s mouth.

“I’m fixing the Artesiatic dampener. I told you yesterday, remember?”

Ha no, Cara does not remember. “I thought we were going to try to find a shipyard.”

“I don’t need a shipyard, I can fix it.” The drill buzzes, and something goes SNAP. “Oops.”

Cara folds her arms. “Is that part of fixing it?”

“It’s fine. I just have to solder that part back.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“Not long, I swear.”

“We’re going to the market today, if you want to eat something other than berries for dinner tonight.”

Mando’s mouth twists in distaste. “Oh yeah. I can finish this later.”

“Uh-huh. In the meantime, is my ship in condition to fly?”

“Um. . . not exactly, but it wasn’t really safe to fly anyway until that part was fixed. It won’t take me long to finish.

“Huh. Ok. Maybe you’d like to pick up the tools before the kid eats them all. I’m going to get ready.”

* * *

Mando is nothing if not resourceful. Cara discovers when she comes back out from showering that he has used a pair of her old leggings to rig up a little front-pack/sling carrier for the kid. When he puts the kid in it and pulls the legs/straps tight over his shoulders, you wouldn’t even know he was carrying a baby. You would just think he was weirdly fat only in the stomach. Cara doesn’t say that, of course. She just raises her eyebrows and nods appreciatively while trying desperately not to smile.

“It looks fine if I put my jacket on,” Mando says. Oh, he’s serious. Ok.

“Sure, that looks fine,” Cara assures him. Yep, just fine. No one is going to think you’re pregnant. Perfect.


	19. mudhorn stuffy

* * *

They pull the camo cover over the ship and tie it down on the corners. Then they have to walk about a klick to catch the crowded public transportation to the market. Mando pulls his hat down over his eyebrows as they climb aboard. Cara catches a glimpse of the anxiety in his eyes before he tugs down on the brim. Yeah, probably a good thing to cover that up. Tough-looking guy with fight-or-flight eyes and a bulge under his seasonally inappropriate jacket—probably not a good combination if you want to avoid attention from the security guards.

There’s no place to sit, so they end up standing in the aisle hanging onto poles. As the transpo sways and lurches to a start, Cara slides her hand into his and gives it a squeeze. He grabs hold and hangs on tight. When the vehicle goes over a bump, Mando pulls her in and puts both of their hands on his stomach, where she can feel the kid squirming and trying to arch his back. Mando pats his stomach with the back of her hand, while Cara looks away and tries to pretend there’s nothing weird going on. At least the kid is being quiet, so none of the other people on the transpo have seemed to notice so far.

Since breakfast was. . . um. . . NOTHING, Cara decides they need to eat first. Mando rolls his eyes (“Yes I saw that, young man!”) but Cara insists. She needs coffee and a full stomach to be able to handle a market with the two of them.

The market is smaller than the one on Eovu, but it still has plenty of delicious-looking options. Definitely gotta start with the coffee stand, where Cara buys them both one of those fancy coffees with the flavor shots and blue foam on top. When she hands one to Mando, he sniffs at it, lip curled.

“Try it!” Cara says, inhaling hers deeply. Even just the smell of coffee is revitalizing. Mando is still looking at his like she’s just handed him a cup of hot sewage. “Come on! It’s good!”

Mando glances around from under the brim of his hat. All of the other shoppers are ignoring them, as expected. Finally he takes a quick sip of the coffee and pulls the cup back, tips his head and examines it with a thoughtful expression. He’s got foam in his mustache.

“What do you think?”

“It’s sweet.”

“Yes it is.” Cara doesn’t mention the foam, hoping he won’t notice it, but after the next sip his tongue darts out and licks it away. Pity. “Now what do you want to eat?”

“Um. . . something with meat in it,” he says, then takes another sip of his coffee. Cara cuts her eyes to his stomach, because she knows who that “something with meat” is really for. She heads toward the nearest food vendor, which has a rotating spit of meat in the window. Mando trails along behind her. She orders them two skewers of roasted Bahmat steak, and when she turns around with the food in her hands, she discovers that Mando has finished his coffee, so add that to the list of foods he likes.

“Come on, let’s sit down.” She leads Mando to a table in the corner, in the shade because sweat is already dripping down the side of his face. He must be melting with the jacket and the body heat of the kid strapped to him like that. She sets up the food while Mando tries to figure out how to sit down without squishing the kid. They’re getting some looks, so she takes hold of Mando’s sleeve and pulls him down onto the bench. The kid squawks, and Mando coughs to cover the sound.

Oh great, now Mando is whispering into his shirt front. Nothing to see here, folks.

“Everything ok?” Cara asks him in an undertone.

“He’s fine, just hungry.” Mando pulls a piece of meat off the skewer, tears off a bit, and sticks it into the frontpack for the kid. Nope, that’s not weird at all.

Mando feeds about half of his skewer bit by bit to the kid, then sits and stares at the other half, lips pressed together. His jaw muscle is jumping again.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Cara asks him. She’s done with hers already and has her used napkins piled up on her plate ready to throw in the recycler.

He swallows hard and huffs through his nose. He’s still staring at the food but hasn’t moved to pick it up.

“Was that a yes or a no?”

His mouth twists but he doesn’t answer.

“Din, what’s wrong?”

“I can’t,” he whispers through his teeth.

“Can’t what?”

Mando glances around at the packed tables. “Can’t eat around all these people,” he mutters.

“Oh, sorry. Ok, let’s take it with us. Maybe you can eat it later.”

“Yeah. Ok.”

Cara loads up with protein bars first, including as many pickled coodler roe bars as she can find. Then she has to carry the heavy shopping bag, so maybe that wasn’t the best first stop.

Next up: clothes. Her attempts to get Mando to choose his own clothes are met with shrugs. She’s better at judging his size now that she’s seen him naked, so she just picks up a handful of random t-shirts. He’s too busy surveilling their surroundings to pay attention to what she’s doing, so she tosses a purple one on the pile. When he doesn’t squawk, she adds a button-up shirt with orange and yellow stripes, and heck why not—a pair of red shorts. He’ll look cute in shorts, if she can convince him to wear them. And if she can’t, well, then SHE will look cute in shorts. She also gets herself another nightshirt and a pair of leggings to replace the ones that Mando modified to make the sling.

Then it’s time to pick baby clothes. HAHA Cara doesn’t know how to do that. She has never had a kid, never wanted kids, had no younger siblings, never even babysat, It’s the weirdest feeling in the world to hold up a little. . . romper, maybe? and try to estimate if it would fit the increasingly squirmy kid currently strapped to Mando’s belly, while Mando stands by with an arm wrapped around his stomach like he’s holding his guts in and pretending not to be interested.

As Cara is holding the romper up to Mando’s stomach trying to picture the length of the kid’s legs, she looks up to find the shopkeeper watching them with her eyebrows furrowed. Cara flashes her a winning smile and rubs Mando’s stomach. The shopkeeper’s eyebrows climb, then she looks away, luckily, because Cara can feel the kid’s claws grabbing at her hand through the fabric.

Cara decides to buys the romper, because she feels like she has to at that point, along with a handful of little t-shirts, some teeny-tiny underwear, and a couple pairs of comfy-looking pants that should fit the kid. To Cara’s surprise, Mando breaks his attention away from his surveillance long enough to toss a brown cloak with a hood and a kid-sized belt on the pile. She wants to ask him why, but he’s already scanning up and down the walkway again, so she just shrugs and piles the items on thecounter.

Next to the cashier is a basket full of stuffed toys of various animals: dask, bantha, greeper, mudhorn, space slug, vulptex covered in shiny sequins. Eek, a baby porg! As the shopkeeper is ringing up their items, Cara sees, out of the corner of her eye, movement coming from under Mando’s jacket, then a pointy green ear pops out of the makeshift frontpack. Shab. Mando, who is busy looking out at the aisle for threats, hasn’t noticed. Cara turns her body to try to block the shopkeeper’s view just as the top of his head pokes out, followed by a little green claw. A second later, the stuffed mudhorn starts rising into the air. Oh. Oh no.

_Oh no no no._

Oh, the shopkeeper has definitely noticed something is going on now, judging by her confused expression as the mudhorn lifts itself out of the basket and moves through the air in the direction of the kid.

“Ha ha we’ll take this too,” Cara says, grabbing the mudhorn out of midair and adding it to their stack. The shopkeeper is now watching Mando’s stomach with raised eyebrows, so Cara shifts a little more, putting her body between the counter and the kid, bumping Mando’s elbow in the process. Mando seems to have clued in to what’s going on now, because he puts his hand on his chest and starts trying to subtly shove the kid’s head back into the frontpack. When that doesn’t work, he tries to close the fasteners on his jacket, which also doesn’t work because the bulge is too big.

Mando shoots Cara a semi-panicked look. She gives a slight jerk of her head toward the exit. Still trying to close his jacket, Mando starts moving out of the shop toward the aisle. The customer in line behind Cara, a short balding man in a bright blue tunic, also heads toward the exit, and the shopkeeper watches him go with a very sour expression on her thin face. Shit, they’re taking too long and lost her a sale. Cara flashes another winning smile as she adds the baby porg stuffy to their pile to make up for it. And then, down at the bottom of the basket, she spots a stuffed mudhorn egg with a tiny mudhorn baby inside, so of course she has to get that too.

Next stall down Cara barely manages to catch a package of cured meat before the kid force-pulls it into the sling. While Mando gives the kid a stern talking-to, whispered earnestly into his shirt, Cara puts the meat in her basket, along with eggs, some random veggies, a couple of precious aurilian fruits, and a bag of dried berries to replace the ones Mando polished off. On second thought, she throws in another bag of berries so Mando can have his own. As she’s headed toward the checkstand, Mando slides his hand into hers and squeezes twice. It’s strange enough that she’s instantly on alert.

When she looks up, his gaze flicks to her, then to the aisle. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. She can read the signs pretty well. This is not just his usual anxiety; something’s going on.

Cara doesn’t outwardly react, just squeezes his hand back as she also glances down the aisle. She doesn’t see anything, just customers milling about. She looks back at Mando, then follows his gaze with her eyes to the next row of the stall, where she sees a bald head and a bright blue tunic. Same guy who was behind them in the last stall? He’s short and baby-faced. Looks harmless, but there’s no telling what he’s hiding under his tunic.

Nerves jangling, she pays and tucks the purchases into her bag, then Mando leads the way back to the aisle, passes two more stalls, turns abruptly to the left at the next intersection, then just as abruptly right, and stops at the next stall, which has tools and parts. If Mando is trying to look casual as he digs through a bin of spare bolts and screws, he’s failing miserably. His eyes keep darting to the aisles on both sides, even as he picks out a handful of loose parts and clutches them tightly in his fist.

Cara pretends to be interested in a rack of wrenches, all the while keeping an eye on Mando, who is keeping an eye on the aisle from under the brim of his hat. A minute later, she spots a flash of bright blue again coming around the corner. The guy ducks into the next booth as soon as she sees him.

She exchanges glances with Mando, who has one hand on his stomach and the other on the knife he has hidden beside the sling. Shit, she doesn’t want anything to go down here; it’s too crowded. And also if she’s being honest she has to admit she doesn’t want to break her eggs, dammit. She’s planning to cook those up for breakfast.

Mando hands her a fistful of screws, drill bits, and a small spool of dull silver wire. As she’s paying for them, Blue tunic reappears, hovering near the entrance to the booth. He cranes his neck, obviously trying to get a glimpse of Mando’s stomach, then backs out of sight again. If he’s a hunter, then he must be new at this, because he obviously has no idea how to be sneaky.

Cara tucks the baggie of screws into her shopping bag, then gestures with her eyes toward the exit, and Mando’s head twitches in a barely perceptible nod. Subtly keeping her own hand on the hilt of her blaster at her hip, Cara follows him out of the stall, down the aisle and out the back exit of the market, into a clearing where families are spread out eating lunch on the grass. A quick glance back confirms that Blue Tunic is still following them. Shit. This isn’t a good place for a confrontation either. Cara’s confident they can take the guy, but she doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt in the process.

Mando keeps moving, through the clearing and into a wooded area beyond. As soon as they are into the trees, Cara splits off and conceals herself behind the thicker brush while Mando keeps going, sticking to the path. She slides her blaster out of its holster but keeps it aimed at the ground, and waits, keeping Mando’s back in view.

A few seconds later, her patience is rewarded when the man in the blue tunic sneaks past her. He’s walking softly, evidently trying to be quiet about it, but he’s so bad at it. His feet crunching on leaves and sticks make so much noise that there’s no way Mando could fail to be aware of his presence.

Cara slips out of the brush onto the path behind the man. She knows how to be quiet, putting her feet down carefully between the leaves and sticks. The man is still watching Mando and hasn’t noticed her. Cara scans him up and down. His hands are empty. He’s pudgy around the middle, no obvious bulges that might conceal a weapon. The tunic is long enough that he wouldn’t be able to easily reach under it for a hidden holster. He has a shopping bag on his shoulder, but it’s fastened shut. He’s leaning forward, craning his neck like he’s trying to look around Mando, most likely at the kid.

Mando suddenly stops in the path and turns around, knife in his hand. The man makes a panicked little noise, also turns, and almost runs into Cara, who flashes him a feral grin. His eyes go huge.

“Oh!” he exclaims, gaze flitting to the blaster in her hand, then back at Mando’s knife. His hands go up. “Oh! I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Cara says, tilting her head. The man is sweating and his hands are shaking.

“N—nothing! No reason.”

“You’ve been following us around for an hour,” Mando says through his teeth. Cara’s a bit concerned he’s going to just go ahead and stab the guy before he can answer their questions.

“I’m sorry, I just—I wanted to see your baby.”

The tip of the kid’s ear appears over the top of the frontpack, and then a little set of claws poke out and pull down on the fabric enough to expose one big black eye. The man’s eyebrows go up, and his mouth curves into a gooey smile. Cara recognizes that smile. It’s the same one that Mando makes whenever the kid does something cute.

There’s no smile on Mando’s face right now, however. Scowling, he tugs on the front of his jacket trying to hide the kid from the man’s scrutiny. It doesn’t quite work. “Why?” he growls, pushing down on the kid’s head. This doesn’t work either, in fact the kid pushes back until his entire face is visible, including his impish little grin.

The man’s gooey smile widens. “They remind me of my daughter,” he says, eyes glued to the kid’s face. _What’s that now? How?_

Mando blinks. The knife hangs from his hand, forgotten. “You have a daughter that looks like him?”

“No, not looks like. She is force-sensitive, like him.”

“Is she a Jedi?” Mando snaps.

“Well, not yet. She’s in training.”

Mando’s eyes catch Cara’s. He’s glitching out again. She hasn’t seen that in over a week, but there it is. Ok, breathe, dude. Breathe.

“Where is she training?” Cara asks, still watching Mando, who is breathing hard through his nose now, shoulders jerking up and down.

“There’s a training camp—“

“Where is it?” Mando interrupts.

“I—I don’t know exactly where it is, but—.”

“Your daughter is in a Jedi training camp, but you don’t know where it is?” Cara says incredulously, “You just sent your daughter off who knows where to be trained by you don’t know who?? How did you even know where to send her?”

“There is a woman in my village, she identified my daughter’s. . . gift and connected us.”

“And you just let her go?”

“They convinced her to train with them. I wasn’t in favor of it at first, but she made up her own mind to go. I wasn’t going to stop her from following her gifting.”

“This woman who connected you, who is she?” Mando demands. His hand has gone from pressing down on the kid’s head to stroking his ear. The kid turns his head into the gentle touch, eyes half-closed, like a tooka.

“Her name is Sotan. She remembers the Jedi from before the Empire, from the Old Republic.”

“So she’s a Jedi?”

“N—No, I don’t think so. Look, why don’t you come to my village and meet her? It’s not far! You can ride in my skimmer.” He looks back and forth between them with a broad smile. Mando’s mouth tightens and his arm wraps protectively around the kid’s back. His other hand, the one with the knife, is still down but his fingers are clenched around the hilt in the ready position.

“We’re not going to just go to your village because you say so,” Mando says tightly. Yeah, because taking off to strange villages never worked out before, right?

The man’s smile doesn’t waver. “It’s ok, you don’t have to trust me. I know this is out of the blue. Here, I’ll show you where my village is, and you can come there later if you want." He takes out a scrap of paper and a stub of pencil. Cara can see there is writing on one side of the paper. He flips the paper over and scribbles something, then draws a rudimentary map. “Here,” he says, holding it to Mando, who doesn’t take it. After a second, his smile drops a little. He turns and holds it out to Cara instead with a hopeful expression. Cara takes pity on him and takes the paper from his hand.

“My name is Tarsi Zapal. I put my address on there for you. I'm sure my wife and son would like to meet you and your boy. You could even stay with us. . . if you need a place to stay,” he assures them.

Indignant, Cara opens her mouth to say they’re not homeless, then shuts it again as she notices that the knees of Mando’s pants are dirty, and the collar of the kid’s ragged nightshirt is visible above the obviously jerry-rigged frontpack. She feels a little grimy herself, now that she thinks about it.

“Please, at least consider it. Sotan says force-sensitive children should be properly trained. She can help you.” He smiles at them a minute longer, but when neither of them say anything, his smile fades to a grimace. “All right, I’ll—I’ll just let you get back to shopping. Sorry for bothering you. I mean it, though. About the invitation I mean. Sorry.” He backs away, edges past Cara, and heads back down the path toward the market, throwing a glance back over his shoulder as he goes. The kid puts up a hand, Cara thinks he’s going to use the force to do something, but he just waves, and the man lifts his fingers to return the wave. Scowling, Mando catches the kid’s arm and tucks it back into the frontpack. The kid’s ear sags, dejected, but Mando tucks it back in the frontpack too, then follows up, belatedly, with an awkward pat to the head.

As soon as the man is out of sight, Mando heads back toward the market too. Cara stuffs the scrap of paper in her pocket and follows.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know yet.” They get to the back entrance to the market, and Mando keeps walking, quickly enough that Cara has to hurry to keep up. His hands are balled into fists and his eyes are scanning the aisles on both sides as they go. She knows that look. It’s threat assessment. Mando is farking terrified.

“Are we done shopping?” she asks when they have retraced their steps almost to the front entrance to the market.

“Aren’t we?”

“Do we need any more parts for the repairs?”

Mando’s eyes dart around “No. I can make do,” he says tightly.

Cara does an eyebrow shrug. There’s no use trying to continue shopping when he’s feeling like this. “I guess we’re done then.”

On the transpo back they have to stand again. Mando doesn’t say anything, just stares out the window, eyes hard and mouth drawn in a tight, straight line. Cara wants to hold his hand, but he doesn’t seem in a receptive mood. Then the vehicle makes an unexpected swerve, and as Cara clings to the handrail and sways on her feet, Mando’s hip bumps against hers, jostling her and making her take a step back. His arm unexpectedly wraps around her shoulders to steady her. She looks up at his face, about to tell him she’s ok, but he’s still looking out the window, and his expression hasn’t changed. His arm stays around her for the rest of the ride, and even though she doesn’t need it, she can’t say it’s unwelcome.

Of course, if he would LOOK at her, and TALK to her, that would be even better, but you can’t have everything.


	20. Protect your head

* * *

The swaying of the transpo puts the kid out like a light. Mando looks like he’s sleepwalking too. Although he holds Cara’s hand on the walk back to the ship, he doesn’t say a word the whole way. By the time they get to the ship, the kid is so dead asleep he doesn’t even stir when Mando extricates him from the sling and puts him to bed. He’s so still and limp Cara would’ve thought him dead if it weren’t for the rhythmic rise and fall of his narrow chest.

While Cara starts unpacking the bag, wondering what she can do to get Mando to start talking again, Mando pulls the blanket up over the kid and goes back outside without a word. Huh. Ok. Go after him, or give him space?

Her stomach growls. Ok, fine, give him space while she eats a protein bar. Empty stomach make Cara grumpy, no good talk when grumpy.

She takes herself up to the cockpit so she won’t disturb the kid. While she’s eating her bar, she pulls the slip of paper out of her pocket and smoothes it out on her knee.

_Tarsi Zapal_

_7 Marg Sabl Avenue_

_Lilhas_

Cara has never heard of Lilhas, so she brushes the crumbs off her fingers and searches for it in the database. Small village about forty kilometers on the other side of Dracuu. Small downtown, mostly simple mud homes surrounded by forest and farmland, small landing pad on the outskirts. Major producer of Tekka nuts and juicemelon, the infodump informs her. Thank you, infodump, very helpful information. Tarsi’s address is on one of the backroads outside of town, not far from the landing pad. If Mando would go ahead and finish fixing the part he disassembled, she’s sure she could get them there without being noticed.

Before she can change her mind, Cara downloads the map and sends it to Mando’s datapad. He doesn’t respond, and Cara’s done eating, so she goes to the hatch, and finds him in the clearing, alone, practicing his moves. _Strike—step back—block—inside kick—_

He doesn’t appear to have noticed her yet. His face is total concentration. The evening sun is slanting through the trees, catching his hair in golden light as he goes through the moves. Cara has to sits down on the ramp to watch. His skin has darkened quite a bit from the exposure to the sun. It looks right on him, she realizes, like that’s the shade his skin was meant to be, would have been, if he hadn’t kept it covered his whole life.

_Block—counter—step back—jab—cross—_

She realizes after about the tenth move that he is replaying their sparring session from yesterday, and he’s still doing a shitty job of protecting his head. _defensive kick—step back—fake—hook—step back—kick—_ all with his fists down at shoulder level.

Cara has to bite her tongue to keep from saying anything. Let him figure it out. She leans back and closes her eyes, watching the glow of the sunlight through her eyelids. It’s the perfect temperature, just starting to cool off from the day’s heat. She’s trying to work up the energy to cook up some real food for dinner when a shadow crosses her face.

“Spar with me,” Mando says. Cara opens her eyes to find him standing next to her with his hand out. The sun behind him catches him in silhouette.

Cara squints up at him. “Are you sure? That didn’t work out so well last time.”

“You said you wouldn’t do that again.”

“Well, I can’t say I won’t take you down if I can, but I will let you up again.”

“I know, you promised,” he says earnestly, “I trust you.”

Oh, well, that is so sweet, doubly so because Cara knows Mando doesn’t trust easily. She can’t help but take his hand and let him pull her to her feet. And of course, because he’s Mando, he has to go and ruin it.

“Just like you promised you’d help me find the kid’s people.”

_Shit_.

She’s gotta tell him the truth, doesn’t she? Because he trusts her, and she doesn’t want to break that trust. But before she can think of how to put that particular bit of news into words, he steps back into a fighting stance. “Ok,let’s go slow so you can show me what I’m doing wrong.”

Ha ha maybe later. Right now she has to teach him how to protect his fool head. Her body automatically assumes a fighting stance too. It’s natural, like breathing. “Elbow up,” she says, demonstrating raising his forearm to cover his face. He copies her.

“Like this?”

“Yeah, now hold that. I’m going to throw a strike.” She closes the gap and swings at his left temple, stopping before she makes contact. “Raise your elbow and slide your forearm back to block.”

“Oh—oh right,” he says, moving his arm to protect his head. “We didn’t learn this part.”

“Closer to your head,” she says, pushing his arm in against his temple. “You never needed it before. Now you do.”

“. . . Yeah.”

She throws a few more strikes in slow motion, giving him time to block. He’s got both arms up in front of his face, which leaves his body open. Cara feints a kick to the torso, but when he brings his arm down to block, she changes trajectory toward his head instead. He’s slow to respond, so she stops the motion before she makes contact with his cheek.

“You can move your head, you know.”

“Oh yeah. Good idea,” he says, like the idea had never occurred to him. But of course it hadn’t. He never had to worry about his head before. Anyone trying to kick him in the helmet would be more likely to break their foot.

They go a few more rounds while Mando practices keeping his elbows up, and moving his head, and quickly returning to ready position after blocking a body blow. Once they are in a good rhythm, Cara says, “Are you going to take the kid to the village?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t seem safe,” Mando says as he blocks a slo-mo left hook to the temple. “Why do they have to train him? I can train him myself.”

Cara tries the kick feint to the torso again, but this time Mando moves his head before she can reposition her foot. “Oh? You know the ways of the Force, do you?”

“Well, no,” Mando says, attempting an inside kick that Cara blocks. “Doyou?”

Cara tries two more combination blows to the head, but Mando is learning fast. He blocks them easily this time. “No,” she admits, “but I saw Vader and the Emperor one time. Scary shit.”

“What does Vader have to do with this?”

Cara picks up the pace, aiming a right uppercut at Mando’s jaw. When he moves to block, she catches his arm and repositions it closer to his face for better protection. “Like that. . . They say Vader was a Jedi but he turned to the dark side.”

Scoffing, Mando steps back and returns to ready position, elbows up like she showed him. “I don’t think that’s real.”

“Vader was real.”

“You don’t know he was a Jedi.”

Annoyed, Cara picks up the pace again. She throws a kick that she knows he will block, just so it will hurt his forearm. “Look, aren’t we trying to find the kid’s people? The Jedi are his people and here we’ve just been handed a way to find them.”

Mando steps back and shakes out his arm, scowling. “I don’t trust that guy. We need to keep looking.” He drops into a ready stance again, elbows up.

Cara steps back into ready position too and bounces on her toes. She’s beyond irritation now. What the hell is wrong with him?! He’s got an opportunity to find the Jedi right in front of him, and he refuses to take it. She’s pissed, and when she’s pissed, her brain shuts off and her mouth takes over. She says stupid shit. Shit she later regrets. “You know, I never actually promised to help you find the kid’s people,” she snaps.

Mando’s hands drop and his feet go completely still. He just stands there silently staring at her. Glitching out again. So of course Cara has to take advantage of his unprotected head. She closes the gap and throws an elbow strike, which she stops just short of his already-bruised chin. He doesn’t move to try to protect himself.

“See, you left your head open,” she says, stepping back. Mando doesn’t move. “Put your elbows up.”

Mando still doesn’t move. His breathing is a little funny and his jaw muscle is twitching. Uh, maybe there’s a problem here. Maybe she shouldn’t’ve said it like that, even though it’s true.

“Din?”

“. . . You didn’t?”

“Well. . . No. I have a job, remember?”

Mando blinks at her. “But your job was hunting me and you said you weren’t going to do that.”

Cara’s mouth twists. Does he think she only pops into existence when he happens to need her?? “I had other markers.”

More farking blinking. “You did? When?”

“When I got your distress call. I was on a job. What did you think I was doing?”

“I didn’t know that.”

Cara shrugs. “Well, now you do.” She drops back into position and puts her elbows up, fists curled, ready to start sparring again, but Mando backs up two steps, turns and starts walking toward the ship.

Frowning, she calls after him, “Where are you going?”

“To get the kid,” he calls back without turning around.

“Why?”

“So we can get out of your hair and you can go back to the hunt.”

Oh shit OH SHIT. She screwed up. Of course, it’s not all her. He is totally overreacting here, because she never said she wanted him to leave. “What makes you think I want to do that??”

“You just said it!”

“No I didn’t!”

Mando spins around, eyebrows furrowed, arms out. “Yes you did! You said you didn’t want to help me find the Jedi!”

“No, I said I never promised, but that doesn’t mean I want you to take off! If you want to go to that village, I’ll go with you. Or actually I’ll take you, as soon as my ship is fixed.”

Mando goes back to blinking. Well, that’s better than shouting and walking away, right?

“You said it wouldn’t take long to fix the ship, right?

Mando’s eyes cut to the side, then over Cara’s shoulder. His jaw twitches. “. . . What if I don’t want to go there? What will you do then?”

“Why, are you _trying_ to get rid of me?” Cara blurts out. See this—this right here? This is why she can’t have nice things. She’ll always break them. She’s good with her hands, but clumsy with her mouth. All too often she blurts out comments in the heat of the moment that she immediately wishes she could unsay.

Mando’s face scrunches up and turns red. “NO! I LOVE YOU!!” he shouts. Cara can’t hear him over his tone of voice. Who shouts something like that? Why is he angry? Well, now she’s angry too. She can feel it like a coiled snake in her belly. She folds her arms and raises her eyebrows at him while her brain supplies her with lots of ammo to throw back at him, but before she can get the verbal bullets lined up, his face crumples and he deflates like a balloon.

“I’m—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve said it like that,” he says. His mouth is twisted and his eyes are brimming. Shit. She made him cry again. The realization takes the wind out of her sails. She crosses the clearing and stops in front of him.

“I’m sorry too. I’m not going anywhere, Din.”

“. . . Ok.” He’s looking everywhere but at her, and those eyes are breaking her heart. She feels her own tears pressing against the backs of her eyeballs, trying to push their way out.

“Din? Do you believe me?”

His chin wrinkles up. “Yeah.” He’s still not looking at her. A tear tracks down his face and he quickly palms it away, leaving a streak of dirt behind. She has to **FIX THIS** , or die trying.

“I mean it. I’m not going anywhere.”

He gives her a jerky nod. “Ok,” he says, digging at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I believe you.” So why does he still look like he’s about to cry? _Dammit_.

“Ok, good,” she says, following it up with a pat to his arm. _Flinch_. **Shit**. “Yeah. Ok. I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“No.”

Mental eyeroll. He hasn’t eaten anything except a few bites of meat all day. He’s gotta be hungry. “Well then, you can watch me eat. I’m going to roast up some of those vegetables. You can start a fire while I get the food, ok?” She tries to catch his eye, but his gaze immediately flits away.

“Ok,” he says flatly, expressionless. At least he’s not crying anymore, but Cara can’t say this is any better. Some reaction is better than no reaction, because the next step after no reaction is no affection, and then it’s all over. She screwed up. She screwed up bad and he's going to leave, it’s just a matter of time. This is how it always goes. She can’t have nice things.

Even though the snake in her stomach has turned to lead, Cara goes into the ship and gets the veggies out of the cooler, and a couple of pieces of bristlemelon, and Mando’s leftover “breakfast” too cuz what the heck. Maybe he’ll get hungry when he sees food. Maybe the food will make him happy. Maybe he’ll say he loves her again, but this time he won’t be yelling.

Of course, when she closes the cooler, the noise wakes the kid up. And of course he makes grabby hands toward her while whining “Aah aah muh muh.” He’s still got on her grubby nightshirt, which is practically falling to bits. She takes a look out the door to find Mando has just finished gathering firewood and doesn’t even have the fire lit yet. She’s got time to change his clothes.

It only takes a few seconds to determine she seriously overestimated the length of his legs. The little romper, that had looked so tiny in the shop, has to be rolled up three times before his toes reappear. She wonders what he would do if she tried to put shoes on him. Force-murder her, probably.

She’s gotta admit the little womp rat looks pretty cute in the romper. It’s orange and white striped, and there’s an applique of a baby tauntaun on the chest. When she picks him up, he hugs her neck, which she was NOT expecting. Then he points toward the open door and cries, “DADDA!” which she WAS expecting.

“Ok, yeah, I’ll take you to see your dadda. Hang on.” She awkwardly picks up the food in the other arm and carries everything, with the kid hanging off her shoulder, out to Mando, who has the fire going. He’s sitting on the ground feeding it sticks, but when he sees that her hands are full, he jumps up and takes the kid.

“There’s my boy,” he says, pulling the kid in and letting him twine his clawed fingers in his hair. “Yeah, I’m happy to see you too, Ad’ika,” he says, but his voice sounds forced, at least to Cara’s ear. He’s still upset, but she has no idea how to fix it. Probably they’ll leave in the morning. Not that she wants him to, it’s just what always happens. Why should this time be any different?

While Cara sets up her veggies to roast, Mando sits down on the ground with the kid, back against a log, and picks up his leftovers. Cara hopes he’s going to eat it and be happy, but instead he starts feeding bits of meat to the kid, who hops up and down on his knee making nmm nmm noises.

Cara sits on the log behind them, where she can watch without Mando seeing that she’s watching, and eats a piece of bristlemelon while she waits for her veggies. The kid’s got one hand still tangled in Mando’s hair while he stuffs his face with the other. Sometimes the hands switch, which means pretty soon Mando’s hair is sticking up in spikes from dried meat juice.

For a while, Mando holds the container of meat and watches the kid eat. After several bites, the kid picks up the next handful and stuffs it into Mando’s mouth. Mando takes it, of course, because what else is he going to do? The kid feeds himself another bite, then another one for Mando. Then, seemingly not even realizing what he’s doing, Mando picks up a piece of meat and eats it on his own! Then he does it again! It’s a goddamn miracle.

Pretty soon the kid is snuggled into Mando’s shoulder watching while Mando keeps eating, absently, as he stares in the fire. Cara’s zoning out too, watching the flames dance. Slowly she comes to the realization that she’s being watched. She sees out of the corner of her eye, a pointy green ear appear over Mando’s shoulder, then one eye, then finally a button nose and half of an impish grin. As soon as she catches his gaze, the kid ducks back down, pressing his face against Mando’s shoulder so all she can see are the quivering tips of his ears.

Cara pretends like she’s not paying attention, and after a minute, the eye reappears. This time she makes a show of noticing him: turning her head, raising her eyebrows and opening her mouth like she’s surprised. Grinning, the kid ducks again, rubbing his dirty face against Mando’s shirt. She looks away and eventually his head reappears again. Instead of looking at him, Cara hides her face behind her hands, then pops out, mouthing “Boo!” The kid giggles and ducks his head again. It’s so cute that her farking ovaries start telling her lies again, this time about how much fun it would be to have a baby, even though she knows that babies are a bait and switch. You think you’re getting someone to love you forever, but instead you get handed this wrinkled little gargoyle who sucks all your energy into its howling void of a mouth. 

The next time it happens, Cara pulls her hand away from her face to discover Mando is watching her too, with a shy smile that makes her stomach do flip flops. As soon as she catches his eye, he ducks his head too. Oh, Maker save her, she is in _so much trouble_ with these two.

Somehow, without her even seeing him move, Mando scoots closer so his shoulder is against her thigh, and That Curl is _right there_. How is she supposed to resist that?? Next thing she knows, his head is resting against her knee, and the kid has clambered up and over him into her lap. His toes dig into her quads as he stands on her leg, grinning, and pats her cheek with his sticky (so, so sticky) little fingers. The setting sun slanting through the trees lights the kid’s head from behind like a halo. Even flying bugs and specks of dust glow like gems in the golden sunlight. It’s fan-farking-tastic. Cara feels a surge of love, for both of them, bubble up inside her, dissolving the lead in her belly. Maybe tomorrow this will all end. Maybe tomorrow Mando will take the kid and walk away, but for tonight, she’s got this, and it’s. . . good.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing as fast as I can, but life is getting busier now that school is (sort of) back in session. I had hoped to get this story finished before the start of the next season, but I doubt that's going to happen. I'm still planning on finishing it eventually, however AU it gets!


	21. Adika

* * *

Cara sleeps poorly and wakes up grumpy. As she sits up, she smells frying bacon and eggs wafting in through the open cabin door. Over the chirping of the birds, she hears an unfamiliar sound, kind of a buzzing, snapping noise. Mando’s bed is open and empty. What the hell is he doing out there? She pulls her blanket around her shoulders and stumbles to the ramp, to find Mando sitting cross-legged on the ground again, the kid sitting on his lap. Mando is wearing a bandana tied around his mouth and nose, and the kid has Mando’s helmet on his head—well, not just his head, it covers his shoulders to halfway down his chest. Mando’s soldering back on the piece that snapped off from the Artesiatic dampener, with the kid’s hand over his on the handle of the soldering iron. Sparks are flying around them, but neither of them seem to notice. Cara notices that the knees of the kid’s romper are dirty and one cuff has come unrolled, covering his foot. Not my problem, she reminds herself sharply. If Mando wants to let the kid’s clothes get dirty and singed, that’s his responsibility. At least they’re protecting their faces.

As she’s walking down the ramp, Mando looks up and pauses in his work.

“Hey, good morning,” he says in a very neutral voice that makes her wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe that’s the idea. “There’s eggs and bacon.” Soldering resumes.

“Ok, thanks.”

“I’ll be done with this piece in a few minutes, so after breakfast we can get underway.”

“Um. . .Underway to where?”

“Lilhas,” he says, like it’s obvious. But it’s not obvious to Cara. Wasn’t he just saying last night that he didn’t trust that guy?

“So now you want to go? What changed your mind?”

He shrugs. “I just changed my mind,” he says, already going back to soldering. Cara frowns at him, suspicious, but he doesn’t look back up. She could ask him why, but what’s the point? It’s not like he’s going to tell her the truth. So apparently they are going and that’s that. It’s what she wanted, wasn’t it? So why does she feel like she’s walking over a partially cooled lava-field? Why does she feel like a giant fist is tightening around her guts?

Her stomach rumbles at the smell of food. She’s hungry and he made her breakfast. It would be rude not to eat it. They’ll all feel better with food in their stomachs.

“Let me know when you’re ready for a plate,” she says.

“I’m not hungry.”

_Sigh_

Even though he doesn’t lift his head, Cara can feel him watching her as she walks past to get to the food. She tries to relax her shoulders and untwist her mouth, but she’s pretty sure he already saw it anyway. As she is scooping up a serving of eggs with leftover roasted peppers, he shuts off the soldering iron and gets up, with the giggling kid under one arm.

“Actually I guess I am hungry. I don’t know why I said that.” He slides the rest of the eggs onto a plate and sits down on the log, leaving room at the end for her to join them. She pours a cup of coffee from the carafe next to the fire, shrugs and pours another one for Mando, who is trying to coax a stone-faced kid to eat a bite of peppers. He looks like he could use some caffeine.

She gathers both cups in one hand and her plate in the other and goes to join him on the log. He favors her with a rare smile that almost almost looks genuine. She would believe it if it weren’t for the tightness around the eyes, the little twitch of the jaw muscle. Cara decides to pretend. Pretending has gotten her through many tougher situations than this.

“Coffee for you,” she says, holding out the cup. He takes it automatically.

“Um. . . thanks.” He lifts the cup and sniffs it tentatively. “Smells good.”

“Is good,” Cara assures him. “Coffee is a gift from the Maker to keep us sane. You liked it the other day, remember?” She wonders how it’s possible this man made it to adulthood without drinking coffee, but then she remembers he was raised by a radical death cult that put a flamethrower in his hand when he was eight, and taught him to wear a helmet 24/7 since childhood, so she guess it’s not too much of a surprise that coffee wasn’t on the menu.

He takes a careful sip, grimaces, and pulls the cup away. “This doesn’t taste the same as the one from the market.”

“Wait, hang on.” She takes his cup back, scoops in a couple spoonfuls of sweetener, stirs it and gives it back to him. This time when he takes a sip, his eyebrows go up.

“Better?”

“Still tastes like shit, but at least it’s sweet shit.” Mando sets down his cup and starts cutting the peppers up into tiny pieces with the side of his fork.

“How would you know what shit tastes like?”

“I cook for myself, remember? I’ve eaten some pretty nasty stuff.” Mando loads up a forkful of eggs with bits of pepper hidden inside and waves it in front of the kid’s face. The kid opens up and takes the bait.

“These eggs aren’t bad,” Cara says, as the kid spits out the mouthful of eggs and peppers, babbling nonsense that is clearly a string of curse words.

“He begs to differ.”

Cara tucks a piece of pepper inside a bite of eggs and dumps salt on top. “Here, Deeka,” she says, holding the fork out enticingly. He sniffs it, then, apparently satisfied it is uncontaminated, opens his mouth and eats it.

“It’s Ad’ika,” Mando corrects her, “Not _Deeka_.”

“Adika,” Cara says.

“No, _Ad’ika_.”

Cara can’t hear any difference. She’s sure Mando’s just jealous because the kid ate for her and not him, but she doesn’t say that. No sense in starting another argument.

“How about I just call you Bubba?” Cara says, poking the kid in the belly. This gets her a giggle from the kid and an annoyed grunt from Mando.

“His name’s not Bubba.”

“You don’t know that. It could be Bubba.” She pokes him again.

“MUH MUH AH DAH BUH BUH!” he shouts exuberantly.

“See? He said Bubba.”

“His name’s _not Bubba_.”

* * *

While Mando puts the ship back together, Cara packs up their stuff. Cooking gear gets a cursory rinse, smelly laundry gets a more thorough washing. As she’s packing away the rest of their purchases, she finds the stuffed mudhorn, which she tosses to the kid. He knows exactly what to do with it. Gotta get that thing in his mouth right away.

She packs away the rest of the clothes and supplies while he slobbers all over the stuffy’s horn, and when she goes back outside to fill the water tank, he toddles after her, mudhorn hanging out of his mouth. He’s still dragging the unrolled pantleg in the mud. The third time he trips over it, she rolls her eyes and fetches two pins.

“Come here, bubba—Deeka—Adika,” she says, scooping him up. While he chews on the mudhorn’s horn, she rerolls the pant legs and pins them neatly into place. “There, is that better?”

“Dah guh bah muh muh!” he agrees emphatically, and proves it by scrambling down off her lap and waddling away, ears bobbing. The mudhorn falls to the ground, and he just waves his hand and it levitates back into his palm. Neat trick. Cara wishes she could do that. Just wave her hand and Mando’s duffle bag would levitate itself right off the floor and onto his bed. Tuck it under his covers so he would have to put it away before he could go to sleep. _Sigh_. A girl can dream.

As she is filling the tank, Mando disappears inside the ship and comes back a minute later carrying the little cloak they bought at the market. “Here, Ad’ika, try this on,” he says, kneeling down to fix the cape around the kid’s neck. It’s cute, but Cara has to wonder if she’ll find the bag of clothes sitting in the middle of the cabin later. Then she has to chew herself out because she is channeling her mother instead of enjoying the moment, and she always promised herself she wouldn’t do that.

The kid takes two toddling steps with the cape dragging on the ground, then starts running. The cloak flutters out behind him, and he twists his head as he runs to watch. A few steps further, he spins on his heel and runs back toward Mando, arms out. Mando kneels on the ground and catches him.

“Do you like that, Ad’ika?”

The kid babbles excitedly as he climbs up Mando’s knee and pats him on the back. “DADDA!” he shouts. “DADDA GUH MAH BAHBAH!!” The kid grabs his cloak and flaps it up and down, then pats Mando on the back again. “MUH BAH DADDA!!”

“Yes, I’m Daddy,” Mando says, grinning. The kid pats him on the back again.

“AH GUH BAH!”

“Yes, it goes on your back.”

The patting gets more intense. “DADDA GUH BAH!!”

Mando chews his lip. He’s clearly not getting what the kid is trying to convey here, although it’s clear to Cara. “Um. . . ok. Um. . . Yes, that’s my back.” He shoots a helpless glance at Cara, who is really trying hard not to grin.

“He wants you to get your cape,” Cara says. Mando’s eyes light up.

“Is that what you want, buddy? Ok!” Mando sets the kid down and sprints into the ship. A few seconds later, when he comes back tying his cape around his neck, Cara has a fleeting thought that she’s going to find his bag of armor in the middle of the cabin too, but then the kid starts hopping up and down in excitement and takes off as fast as his little legs will carry him. He looks back at Mando as he runs.

“Dadda GUH! BAH GUH MUH DUH!”

“Ok, I’m coming,” Mando calls, then they are both running around the clearing, capes fluttering out behind them. The kid is dragging the mudhorn, bouncing along on the ground. Even though the lump is still sitting in her stomach, Cara forgets all about dirty knees, and duffel bags on the floor, and petty arguments, and tight eyes and twitching jaw muscles, and just lives in the moment.

It’s a moment that passes far too quickly. Next thing she knows, they’ve got all their shit packed away, Mando and the kid’s bags have been booted out of the middle of the cabin floor, and Cara is sitting in the cockpit going through the pre-flight checklist with an increasingly agitated Mando grinding his teeth in the navigator’s seat. She doesn’t really need him there, which she has already told him. She was trying to be subtle about it, but obviously she was too subtle because he just followed her up to the cockpit anyway, and now he’s perched on the edge of the seat with the kid on his knee, tapping his heel anxiously. She tries to ignore him while she plans their route. She’ll stay sub-orbital so they don’t advertise their drive signature, of course.

“Stay suborbital to hide the drive signature,” Mando says. Cara very nicely controls her impulse to bite his head off. _Perhaps_ only figuratively.

“Got it.” She’ll stay out of the main traffic lanes too. No reason to expose themselves more than necessary. She’s got a route planned that will take them around the city. Less chance of being spotted, but still enough traffic that they won’t look out of place.

“Stay out of the main traffic lanes,” Mando warns her. “Go around the city.” He’s picking at the faint scar on the inside of his wrist again, even though the scab is long gone.

“Yep.”

He’s bent over the navigation console, so he must know she’s already got a route mapped out, but a few seconds later a slightly different one appears on her display. So he changed the route, which gets under her skin, but whatever, she’s just going to let it go. He’s just anxious, that’s all. She can deal with it, even if the lead in her belly is making it hard to swallow.

Mando silently chews on the inside of his lip the whole way there. Cara can hear his jaw moving, even though the rest of him is completely still, almost unnaturally so. Of course, that’s the Mandalorian training. Stillness. Observation. But without the helmet to hide behind, so when she glances at him, she can see all his fears written all over his face, in his puckered eyebrows, in the tightness around his mouth, in his baby porg eyes. The kid in his lap mirrors his feelings. The wrinkles in his forehead have deepened into crevasses, and his huge eyes are locked on Mando’s face.

Cara knows what will happen if she touches Mando—he’ll flinch. And if she says anything to him about his feelings, he’ll just deny it. But the kid—she can comfort him, and that will help Mando too.

“Hey, Bu—Adika, you ok?” she says. She’s looking at the kid, but Mando’s head jerks her way like he thinks she’s talking to him. A second later his head goes back to facing the console, but his eyes are still cut toward her. She pretends like she’s ignoring him as she continues talking to the kid, who is watching her now with those big eyes.

Cara fixes the kid with an encouraging smile. “It’s ok, Deeka, these people are nice. They’re going to help us.”

The kid looks back and forth between her and Mando uncertainly. “I bet there will be other kids there!” she says brightly. The kid tries out a tentative smile. “Maybe even frogs. I know you like frogs!”

Mando snorts. Cara doesn’t look at him, but she can see out of her peripheral vision that he is smirking. His eyebrows have relaxed a fraction.

“And you and Daddy can stay together,” Cara assures the kid.

The kid pats her on the arm. “Muh muh guh bah Dadda?” he says, head swiveling back and forth between her and Mando. “Guh muh muh dah?”

“Um. . . Yes, I’ll be there too,” Cara guesses.

He breaks out into a toothy grin and crows, “Guh dah muh muh!”, so apparently she got that right. Mando is watching her through his lashes, and his mouth is tugged up on the corner like he’s suppressing a grin, so she got that right too. The tight feeling in her stomach loosens a bit, which is also good. She can do this. They can do this together.

* * *

Tarsi and his family are there to meet them when they land. Cara’s not sure how he knows they’re coming, but there they are, all beaming, Tarsi with his arms around his wife and young son. Mando, on the other hand, stands frozen on the gangplank looking like he’s about to shit his pants. His hat is pulled down over his forehead, but it can’t hide the sheer terror in his eyes. The kid is hanging onto his pantleg, peeking around wide-eyed at Tarsi’s son, who is the nearest to his height. Well, Mando apparently isn’t going to move, so Cara pastes on a smile, hoists the kid on her hip and goes down to meet them.

“I’m so glad you came!” Tarsi exclaims, gesturing to Mando to come join them. Mando doesn’t move. Cara glances back at him and gets the impression he is working hard to control his face, before she is distracted by Tarsi doing introductions.

“This is my wife Breha, and our son Rolin,” he says, patting the boy, who looks about eight or nine, on the head. “Dear, this is. . . Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t get your names.”

_Cuz we didn’t give them_. Cara’s still reluctant to give out their names, but as long as they’re doing this, they might as well go all the way. “I’m Cara, that’s Din, and this little guy. . . um. . . We call him Deeka—Adika.” Cara knows she said that wrong, but Din doesn’t correct her this time.

The kid makes grabby hands in the direction of the village. Cara bounces him until he settles again.

“Well, it’s very nice to meet you,” Breha says with a broad smile. “Tarsi told me your boy is force sensitive like our daughter Aurra. It’s good you’ve decided to look into training.”

“How did you know we decided to come?”

“Sotan told us.”

Cara frowns. “How did she know?”

“Oh. . .” Tarsi and his wife exchange a glance. “. . .Sotan just sort of knows things. I don’t know really understand the ways of the Force.”

Sotan just sort of _knows things_?? Cara does not find this reassuring. What other things might she just sort of know? Cara thinks she’s going to have unglue Mando’s feet from the ramp, but suddenly he’s next to her, wrapping his arm protectively around her shoulders. He’s warm, and his grip is gentle but firm on her upper arm. Oh, that’s—that’s nice. She could get used to that. She flashes him a smile that he doesn’t return. His mouth is hard and his eyes are wary. If she were Tarsi and Breha, she’d be concerned about inviting this man into their home, but they don’t seem to notice.

“Come, come. Sotan and her partner are meeting us at our house. We will all be having dinner together.” Tarsi beams like that’s the best idea ever.

“Great!” Cara says through her frozen smile. Dinner together, especially with someone who “just sort of knows things”, sounds like a complete nightmare even to her. Mando’s fingers grip her bicep a little tighter. She can hear his harsh breathing next to her ear. The kid is looking up at him from Cara’s arms. His eyes are wary, just like Mando’s. Mirroring his emotions as always. The sun disappears behind a cloud and the temperature drops a couple degrees.

Apparently they’re walking to Tarsi’s house. Mando takes the kid, who wraps his arm around Mando’s neck, fingers tangled in his hair, and watches the road ahead with wide eyes. Mando has his face pressed against the kid’s fuzzy ear. He’s hiding again. Cara considers taking his other hand, but he’s got his fingers curled into a loose fist.

As Tarsi leads the way, he points out places of interest along the way. A new roads project. The community center. A cantina that serves the best deep fried gorg. A bakery where they get their bread. A little park with brightly-colored play equipment. The pond where local children swim. Mando’s eyes flit around, appearing to be listening, but it’s obvious to Cara that he’s surveilling their surroundings for threats.

“Does your boy like to swim?” Breha, who is walking next to Cara, asks.

“Um. . . we haven’t taken him swimming. He likes frogs.”

“I’ve got a pet frog!” the boy cries, excited. “I can show him!”

The kid looks back over Mando’s shoulder, his eyebrows quirked up in interest. Cara’s not sure whether to tell him that’s not a good idea, but before she gets the chance, Breha says, “Here’s our house. Oh, and Sotan is here already. Perfect!”

A woman is standing in front of the house. She’s very slim and petite, with black and white montrals and lekku like a Twi’lek, although the skin is orangey-tan instead of blue. Cara doesn’t recognize the species. There’s a man standing behind her—tall, broad-shouldered with a soldier’s bearing. He looks relaxed, non-threatening, but as soon as Mando spots him, his spine snaps straight, jaw juts out and his arm tightens around the kid, practically hiding him inside the front of his jacket.

“Who’s that?” he growls, jerking his head toward the man. Cara can’t say she trusts him either. He looks like an imp.

“This is Rex,” the woman answers. Her voice is soft, almost childlike, but now that they’re closer Cara can tell she’s not young. “And this must be the person I’ve been waiting to meet,” she says, smiling, to the lump in Mando’s jacket.

The tip of a green ear appears, then the kid’s head pops out, eyes wide, mouth open. Sotan’s smile turns into something else—a shock of recognition. She exchanges a glance with Rex, who looks the same.

“Do you know him?” Mando says, frowning.

Sotan takes that as an invitation to come closer. Mando clutches the kid tighter, even though he is struggling to get free. “Yes! Well, no, not him, but—“

“You know his species?”

“I met one, a long time ago.”

“Where?” Mando demands. The kid is practically climbing onto his head, reaching out for Sotan, who holds out a hand toward him. Mando catches the kid’s hand and pulls him back in. “Don’t touch him.”

“Even if he wants me to?”

“You don’t know what he wants. Even he doesn’t know what he wants.”

Sotan cocks her head thoughtfully, eyes still locked with the kid. “I promise I won’t hurt him,” she says in a gentle voice, almost amused.

“You still can’t touch him,” Mando growls.

“I was talking to him,” she says, gesturing at the kid. “He doesn’t want me to hurt _you_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I added a new character. She's trying to stay under the radar here, so I didn't want to rat her out. Also I didn't decide until a couple of chapters ago that I wanted to include her, so there's that.


	22. Sotan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tried to be intentionally vague about the whole Mandalorian mythos. If you find mistakes, it's because I haven't seen everything, and there are definitely some contradictions in canon, like, WHY has no one heard of the Jedi? The fall of the Republic was only like 25 years ago. Most of the characters had to have been alive at that time! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. I'm posting it today to get my mind off politics.

* * *

Mando glitches out for a second. When he finds his voice again, he squeaks, “You—you can talk to him?”

“Yes. Well, it’s not talking, exactly, but we can communicate, can’t we, little one?”

The kid bounces up and down in Mando’s arms, making grabby hands toward Sotan. Mando holds him back, warily keeping an eye on Rex, who is watching Mando just as warily. Cara can’t say she trusts him either. He looks like an imp.

“Why don’t you come to my house after dinner? I can tell you all about it,” Sotan suggests.

“DADDA! BUH BUH GUH DAH!” the kid agrees as he pats Mando on the cheek with his sticky little fingers. Mando’s eyes flit back and forth between the kid’s face, inches from his, and Sotan, who is smiling broadly, then to Rex, who is lurking in the background trying to look non-threatening, which only makes him look like an affable serial killer.

Eventually Mando caves. Hard not to when the kid has hold of both sides of his hair and is staring into his face with wide, pleading eyes. “All right, we’ll go.” He glares at Rex. “But he has to stay here.”

“Fine with me,” Rex agrees.

Ha ha dinner is a disaster. Mando hunches in his seat, frozen, very obviously _not_ eating, while the kid stands on his lap scarfing down Mando’s dinner with both hands. Everyone stares at him aghast. Everyone, that is, except Mando, who watches Rex out of the corner of his eye like he’s a venomous snake that may strike at any moment.

Cara tries to offer the kid a fork. He takes it, but instead of using it to eat, he bangs it on the table, and the plate, and Mando’s arm, which Mando totally ignores.

Breha, on Maondo’s right side, tries to engage him in conversation over the banging. She might as well be talking to the soup tureen. Direct questions are met with a glance and grunt. Obvious openings for comments are met with silence. She’s not the only one throwing questions at Mando, either. Tarsi, sitting on the other side of his wife, also gets in on the barrage. Poor Mando looks like a porg surrounded by ravenous gundarks. Cara tries to deflect as many questions as she can, but she’s distracted by Rolin (Rogin? Robin?) on her other side, who is _determined_ to show the kid his frog.

“I can bring my frog out here,” the boy suggests, eyes shining with hope, from under her left elbow.

“Probably not a good idea during dinner,” Cara hedges.

“How about I take the baby to my room? I can show him my frog and my toys!”

“Um. . . Well, we’re busy right now. Maybe after dinner.”

“After dinner you’re going to Sotan’s house. I can take him now. I know how to take care of babies.”

“Well. . .”

Mando leans over Cara and says to Rolin flatly, “He’ll eat it.”

The table goes silent. Rolin’s eyes widen and his mouth makes a little o. On the other side of the table, Rex makes a muffled snorting noise. Cara thinks maybe he choked on something, but when she looks at him, he quickly turns away, corner of his mouth pulled back into a half-grin.

Mercifully, dinner ends quickly after that. Tarsi has made a juicemelon tart for dessert, but when he suggests they hang around to eat it, Mando almost snarls at him.

“Shall we go to my house?” Sotan suggests mildly.

“Oh—oh yes,” Tarsi agrees hastily, “Are you coming back here for the night?”

Mando glitches out, which means Cara’s going to have to decide. The longer they stay here, the more likely it is that the kid will find and gobble down that frog, which would break poor Rolin’s heart and probably get them kicked to the curb. Also there’s the fact that Mando looks like he’s seconds away from a complete meltdown. She wishes they could go back to the ship for the night, but the lot is a “lock and leave”, meaning no overnight stays.

“I have an extra room at my house,” Sotan puts in. “You’re welcome to stay there.” BLESS YOU.

“Yes, maybe that’s a good idea,” Cara says, watching Mando’s face. He doesn’t seem happy with either idea. Cara’s pretty sure the only way he would be happy is if they ran back to the ship and got the hell out of there. But that’s not exactly possible right now, is it? At least going to Sotan’s house would get them away from the noise.

Tarsi packs up half the tart to go and tries to hand it to Mando, who just stares at him blankly. Mando is wrangling a whiny, squirmy toddler, and they both have turquoise sauce smeared across their faces, the kid from scarfing down dinner, and Mando from where the kid was kissing him on the cheeks. Mando’s hair is sticking up and his shirtfront has holes where the kid’s claws dug in.

“I’ll carry it, thanks,” Cara says, reaching in front of Mando to take the tart. It smells amazing. “Ready to go?”

Mando doesn’t answer. He’s too busy trying to pry the kid’s hands out of his hair. The kid whines and pulls on Mando’s fingers, shouting “BAH MUH MUH GUH DADDA!”

“Yeah, ok, let’s go,” Cara says. Exasperated, she puts her hand without warning on Mando’s back ( _flinch_ —oops) and pushes him toward the door. Rolin follows them with his lip sticking out.

“Will you come back tomorrow? I still want to show him my toys,” he says sadly.

“Um. . . I hope so,” Cara says over her shoulder. That’s not a promise, right?

Rex follows her out, but after he exchanges glances with Sotan, he turns the other direction. “Nice night,” he says vaguely, “I’ll just. . . take a walk for a while.” Hands jammed into his pockets, he wanders off into the semi-dark, humming to himself.

As soon as they leave Tarsi’s property, the kid immediately settles down. He sits up on Mando’s arm, claws on one hand curled around Mando’s ear, and takes in everything with wide, curious eyes. After two blocks, Sotan turns down a cluttered alleyway between two run-down apartment blocks. Cara has the sudden fear that it was all a trick and they are about to be robbed, but the kid’s only reaction is a gummy smile. Sotan stops at a non-descript entryway and presses her hand to a panel, and the door opens unexpectedly onto an inner courtyard filled with light and flowers. No idea how, since it’s almost dark out, and there are no light fixtures in the area that Cara can see. Must be Force magic.

“Have a seat,” Sotan says, gesturing at a white sofa. Cara glances back at Mando, who is standing in the doorway looking like he’s psyching himself up to jump off a cliff. Cara’s sure he’s going to bolt, but after a second he heads toward the couch, breathing shallowly through his nose. He sits gingerly on the edge of the couch with the kid perched on his knee. The kid grabs for the arm of the couch, but Mando catches his hand before he can smear it with turquoise sauce.

Cara sits next to Mando. The whole couch is vibrating slightly, even though she can’t see him moving at all. Sotan sits in an easy chair opposite them and leans forward, elbows on her knees. She has huge blue eyes and an intense gaze that is intimidating in spite of her small size.

“All right, Din, what would you like me to do?” she asks bluntly.

Cara can see Mando’s jaw muscle jumping from chewing the inside of his cheek. “Can you talk to him?” he blurts out. “I mean, talk to him for me?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

Sotan chuckles. “You’re going to have to narrow it down a little. What’s one specific question you have?”

“What’s his name?”

“Excellent question. May I—May I hold him?”

Mando hesitates, looking back and forth between Sotan’s outstretched arms, and the kid, who is also reaching toward Sotan, eagerly, mouth open in a slobbery grin. “Why do you have to hold him?”

“DADDA BUH BUH DAH KUH!” the kid babbles, grabbing for Sotan’s fingers. “GUH GAH!”

Scowling, Mando passes him over. Sotan’s smile is as huge as her eyes. She slides her palm over the top of the kid’s fuzzy head, almost reverently.

“He says his name is . . .Deeka.”

Mando frowns and shakes his head. “No, that’s not his name. I call him that—well, sort of, but it’s not his name.”

Sotan narrows her eyes at Mando thoughtfully. “Well, he thinks it’s his name. It might as well be, since he will be a child for many more years.”

Mando’s scowl deepens. Cara wonders what he expects Sotan to do—tell the kid he’s wrong about what his name is? Mercifully instead of pushing it further, he changes the subject. “Does he remember his family? Or where he was before?”

“Hmm. . .Not his family, no others like him. He remembers. . . “

The kid’s mouth tugs down in distress and his ears start to quiver. “Oh, he’s showing me the Emperor.” Sotan brushes her fingers along the kid’s ear. “He’s dead, Deeka. You don’t have to worry about him.”

There is silence for a moment, then Sotan repeats, “No, he’s dead. He’s gone, you’re safe.”

The kid makes a little whimpering sound. Mando’s knee is jiggling up and down. His biceps are taut from fighting the obvious urge to grab the kid out of Sotan’s arms.

She continues brushing her hand over the kid’s head while she says to Mando, “He’s showing me being somewhere small and dark, and then. . .” She pauses, looks back at the kid, then at Mando, eyes wide and mouth open in a delighted smile. “Oh, you’re a Mandalorian!”

There is a sudden movement next to Cara, then Mando’s on his feet and bolting toward the door. Sotan watches him go, eyebrows raised. Um. . . “Yeah, I should probably go after him,” Cara says as the door closes behind him. “You guys ok here?”

“Yes, we’ll be fine, won’t we, Deeka?” Sotan’s tone is light, but there’s a worried crease between her white brows. The kid babbles something in response, but Cara’s already out the door, hurrying down the cluttered alleyway after Mando’s receding back.

“Din!” she calls. He stops before the end of the alleyway but doesn’t turn around. His arms are tightly folded, and Cara can hear him breathing from ten steps away.

“It’s gotta be a trick. Somehow she already knew.”

“It’s the Force, Din. That’s how she knew. Just like the kid.”

“I don’t want to do this,” he says tersely.

“Yes, you do. You know this is what you have to do.”

“No I don’t. I could take him and walk out of there. No one could stop me.”

“I know you love him, and loving him means giving him what he needs.”

“I can give him what he needs,” Mando growls.

“He needs to have guidance to develop his gift. Love him enough to give him that.”

Mando doesn’t say anything, but he does half-turn. “I don’t trust her. She’s keeping something back.”

“You don’t have to trust her completely, just enough to take the next step.”

More scowling and labored breathing through his nose. “Come on, you know he needs this,” Cara urges him, “He has to be trained.”

Mando still doesn’t answer, but he does turn toward her and rub his face. When his hands drop, his shoulders do too in resignation. “Yeah, ok, you’re right.”

“I’m right? I mean, yes, of course I’m right. Come on.” Cara holds out her hand, and Mando grabs it and follows her back toward the house.

“Besides, it’s just the next step, right? Just because I go back in there doesn’t mean I have to take him to the Jedi.”

Cara suppresses a sigh. Sure, why not. What’s it going to take to convince him? She has no idea and she’s tired of trying.

When they get back inside, they find the kid working himself up to a wail while Sotan bounces him on her knee. As soon as he sees Mando, he starts making grabby hands, so of course Mando takes him back. His fingers latch onto Mando’s ear as he snuggles, snuffling and whimpering into his shoulder. Almost instantly, his ears droop, his huge eyes slide shut and his body relaxes into Mando arms. Mando’s cheek is pressed against the top of the kid’s head. _Deeka’s_ head—he’s got a name now, even if it’s not the one they expected. Mando rocks him slightly, murmuring into his ear. For a second Cara catches a glimpse of the golden bubble surrounding them, then she blinks and it’s gone, and the kid is asleep. Cara glances at Sotan and finds her enormous eyes shining with tears.

“You are a Mandalorian?” she says quietly.

“I was. Not anymore.”

“Why not?”

Mando scowls. “I—I can’t be. Obviously. My helmet was removed,” he says, voice barely above a whisper.

“And. . . ?”

“And nothing. It was removed by someone else. I violated my oath.”

Sotan cocks her head at him, lips pursed. Mando shifts uncomfortably.

“You swore an oath never to remove your helmet?”

“Yes. Everyone did. This is The Way,” Mando insists, voice rising. The kid squirms on his shoulder. Mando settles back on the sofa and pats his back until he relaxes again.

“You weren’t raised on Mandalore, were you?”

“I was a foundling.”

“Ok, I mean after you were taken in.”

“I—I don’t want to get into it.”

Sotan’s tone softens. “I understand, but Din, you need to understand that the way you were raised is not typical of all Mandalorians.”

“I—That’s not important to me. I know the Oath I took. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Sotan sits back and lets out a breath. “All right. Let’s change the subject. Why don’t you trust the Jedi?”

“They are my enemies.”

“You consider the Jedi your enemies?”

“I _know_ they are my enemies.”

“Why?”

“Because the Jedi invaded and killed half my clan! We were lucky to escape with our lives.” Mando snarls in a half-whisper, mindful of the sleeping kid’s ear next to his mouth.

“How old were you when this happened?”

“Twelve.”

Sotan sits back. The anger melts out of her face, leaving a sympathetic expression. “There’s a lot you don’t know.”

“I know what happened. The Armorer told me. The Jedi are murderers.”

“It’s a lot more complicated than that,” Sotan says gently.

Mando’s jaw clenches. “Don’t treat me like a child!” he snaps.

“All right, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to talk down to you, but really, there’s a lot you wouldn’t know.”

“How do you know? Were you there?”

Sotan purses her lips and breaks eye contact. Now it’s her turn to shift uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“You were a Jedi. Why aren’t you a Jedi anymore?”

“I have my reasons.”

“What are they?”

“It’s not important.”

“If I’m going to turn my child over to the Jedi, I need to know what I’m getting into.”

“I can promise you the Jedi will not harm him, but he must be trained,” Sotan says firmly.

“Why?”

“An untrained Jedi can turn to the Dark Side.”

“You’re talking about Vader,” Cara interrupts. Finally, something she knows about. Something she told Mando about and was met with skepticism, and now here’s confirmation. “Did you know him?”

“Yes, a long time ago, but he wasn’t Vader when I knew him. He was a Jedi. Look, Deeka is afraid, and fear is the path to the Dark Side.”

“If he’s afraid, I can help him,” Mando objects, because he’s completely full of shit. Not that Cara’s going to tell him that, because he’s not listening to her.

Sotan doesn’t hold back, “You cannot help him because you’re afraid too.” Her tone is hard, but her eyes are sad, not angry.

Mando glares at Sotan and opens his mouth to object. but at that moment, the kid sits up and starts bawling. He’s got his claws dug into the shoulder of Mando’s shirt, and with his other hand he’s pulling on Mando’s ear while he wails.

“Hey, it’s ok, Ad’ika,” Mando says, rubbing his back in gentle circles. Cara’s not sure whether he’s trying to soothe the kid or himself. “Shhh. . . it’s ok.” He sways and pats until the kid settles back onto his lap. The kid grabs Mando’s fingers and pulls them into his mouth. His wide eyes blink at Sotan while he chews on the fingers. There’s a line on his wrinkly cheek from the seam on Mando’s shirt. The corner of Sotan’s mouth quirks up in a smile, although it doesn’t quite reach her sad eyes.

“I can contact the Jedi for you,” she says, still watching the kid.

“I don’t want them to know who or where he is,” Mando rejoins quickly.

“Well, I need to tell them _something_. What do you want me to tell them?”

“Who would you be contacting? Luke Skywalker?”

“He’s not my contact.”

“Then who? And where are they?”

“I don’t have that information. You will simply have to trust me.” Her eyes are huge, like enormous blue pools. Cara feels like she’s drowning in them. The kid is gazing at Sotan similarly wide-eyed, but Mando is still scowling.

“I’m not going to sit around here and wait for someone I don’t even know, someone who is my enemy, to come and take my kid away.”

“Then what do you want?” Sotan asks. There’s no heat in her voice, her tone is sincere and curious, and her eyes are still kind. The kid blinks, then opens his eyes again halfway. His eyelids and the tips of his ears are starting to droop again. Cara feels the same. If only they could get this idiotic argument over, they could send a message to the Jedi and go to bed.

“I want to go to them, on my own terms.”

“What are your terms?”

Mando’s jaw twitches from chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Give me the coordinates of their base. I’ll scout it out, and if I think it’s safe, I’ll contact them.”

Sotan’s mouth curves up into a ghost of a smile. “Well, that is an interesting proposition. I will consider it.”

Mando’s head comes up, chin out. “Consider telling me where their base is?”

“I will consider asking my contact how they feel about giving me their location. Now then, I’m tired and I can see Deeka is too. I can show you where the guest bedroom is. I’ve already asked Rex to stay at Tarsi’s house tonight.” Sotan stands and confidently leads the way down the hall like they’re just going to jump up and follow her.

Mando glares at her back. Cara’s not sure he’s going to take her up on it, even though they have nowhere else to go. Even if they walked back to the ship in the dark, the lot is locked up for the night. The guards aren’t going to let them in without a fight they’re not willing to have. Well, Cara’s tired too, and if a bed is being offered, she’s going to take it. She stands up then turns back to Mando. Still scowling, he looks down at the kid, who is definitely drooping, then up at Cara, who holds out a hand and raises her eyebrows expectantly.

After a few more seconds of glaring, Mando hoists the half-asleep kid to his shoulder, stands up and stalks down the hall after Sotan, who looks amused. That’s a lot more charitable than Cara is feeling. They came all this way, finally found what they have been looking for, and Mando is being a complete ass about it.

The bed in the guest room turns out to be no wider than Cara’s bunk on the Princess. Mando and the kid take up two-thirds of it, and Mando’s farking attitude takes up most of the rest. Cara lays on her back along the edge of the bed, folds her arms, and tries to keep the eyerolling to a minimum while Mando expounds on his thinking, in a hoarse whisper to avoid waking the kid in his arms.

“I don’t trust her.”

“That’s obvious. Why not?”

“She’s a Jedi, I’m a Mandalorian,” Mando says simply, like she’s an idiot for even needing to ask. It’s physically painful for Cara not to roll her eyes.

“She’s not a Jedi anymore, and you’re not a Mandalorian anymore either.”

“She’s still my enemy.”

“She doesn’t seem to consider herself your enemy. And she clearly can communicate with Deeka.”

“Ad’ika,” Mando corrects her.

“Adika.”

Mando huffs through his nose, but doesn’t correct her again. Cara’s not going to remind him that Sotan pronounced it “Deeka,” even though it’s true. “She seemed to consider the Mandalorians her friends.”

“Those aren’t _real_ Mandalorians,” Mando sneers. “ _Dar’Mandoa._ ”

Cara’s not going to take the bait and ask him what that means. She wants so badly to bite his head off. To tell him in no uncertain terms that he’s being an idiot. That of course they should take the kid to the Jedi. It’s the whole point of that stupid _quest_ the armorer gave him! But she doesn’t say any of that. She can’t think of anything nice to say, so she stares silently at the ceiling.

After a couple of minutes, she feels the bed shift, and then Mando’s forehead presses against her shoulder. She can feel the muscle at his temple twitching from chewing the inside of his cheek. Oh.That’s his anxious tell. That’s where his horrible attitude comes from. He’s afraid, just like Sotan said. The realization takes some of the edge off Cara’s annoyance. “What could Sotan do to prove she’s worthy of your trust?”

“If she gives us the coordinates of the base, for starters.”

“And then what?”

“Then we do recon, decide for ourselves. If I don’t think it’s safe, we leave.”

Nice of him to make the decisions for her like that. “How will you know?”

“Look for offensive weapons. Military equipment. If it looks like they’re hiding their numbers.” She feels his hand groping for hers on her stomach. When he finds it, he pulls it up onto his head.

“Do you want me to play with your hair?”

“If you want,” he says promptly, like her hand had just somehow found its way up there on its own. Ok, fine, she’ll play with his hair, only because she enjoys it too. It’s unfair of him to do something adorable when she’s trying to stay mad at him.

“Just their willingness to give us the coordinates of their base would be evidence of their good faith,” Cara suggests as she runs her fingertips lightly over his scalp. His hair is still sticky from dinner. She gently works some of the tangles out.

“Mmm. . . unless it’s an. . . ambush,” he mumbles sleepily.

“It’s not possible to know for certain. Sometimes you just have to take things on faith.”

She’s expecting him to fight her on that, to say there is certainty in life, This is the Way, etc, but there’s nothing. His breathing has slowed and evened out. Yeah, he’s asleep. Well good. He can’t argue with her when he’s asleep. Taking her hand off his head, she shifts a little to get comfortable, which puts them almost nose to nose. Even in sleep he’s still scowling, and his arm is wrapped around the kid so tightly she can see the tension in his bicep. She wonders if the kid can breathe, but he seems to be sleeping comfortably, tucked in against Mando’s chest.

She closes her eyes and is half-asleep herself when she realizes SHAB! They can’t take her ship the the Jedi training base—The Imps know their drive signature. They’d be leading them right to the Jedi and probably get them all killed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you drop me a comment, it will bring a smile to my face in these unprecedented times. And it will give me something positive to check my phone for instead of d o o m s c r o l l i n g.


	23. Shh

* * *

Cara wakes up early, before it’s even really light out. Mando and the kid are still sleeping furiously. She has a thought spring to her mind, unbidden, that she could just sneak out the door and take off without them. If she leaves him stranded here, he’d be forced to go to the Jedi.

It’s a really bad idea.

It’s a really _really_ bad idea.

And yet. . .

She’s not going to do it. Not now, not here. She’s come this far; she feels an obligation to at least push Mando over the finish line. Then she’ll see how she feels. It’ll be easier to decide later. So she pushes it to the back of her mind while she eases herself out of bed and pulls back on her discarded socks. Her stomach is reminding her she was too distracted to eat much last night, and she knows there’s a delicious-looking juicemelon tart somewhere in the kitchen. Maybe she can find it before anyone else is up.

She’s halfway through the living room, trying to find the kitchen, when a small noise alerts her that she’s not alone. She whirls around to find Sotan curled up in the overstuffed chair in the corner, feet tucked under her. She’s got a large, leatherbound book on her lap but she’s not reading. She’s gazing at Cara with her enormous ocean blue eyes. It’s kind of freaky, if Cara’s being honest. Those eyes are looking into her s o u l.

“Oh. Um. Morning.”

“Good morning,” Sotan says with an amused tilt to her lips. “Did you sleep well?’

“No.” Cara doesn’t mean to say that, it just slips out. “Sorry about last night. Mando’s. um. He’s a little messed up.”

The hint of amusement drops. “He’s torn,” Sotan says soberly.

“Yeah, well I wish he would just make up his mind already.”

“No, I mean his spirit is torn. Broken. The child is mirroring his fear.”

Now Cara glitches out. She had thought he was traumatized, confused. Anxious. But _torn_ seems a bit extreme.

“I know you see it too,” Sotan continues, softly, and suddenly Cara gets a picture in her mind, of roiling darkness outside a broken golden bubble, of bricks closing up the hole like a zipper. At the time, her only interpretation had been that it was Mando helping the kid close up the hole, but what if it was the reverse? What if Mando is the broken one, surrounded by darkness and fear, and the kid is trying to fix him? But the kid can’t, can he? He’s a little mirror of Mando’s emotions. That fear is infecting him too. What if it gets to the point where he’s not able to put that bubble back together? Will the darkness swallow them both?

Sotan goes back to reading her book, as if she hasn’t just said something earth-shattering. Cara blinks at her for a minute. Without looking up, Sotan says mildly, “The kitchen is just through that door.”

“Huh?”

“You wanted breakfast, right? First door on the right.”

Cara looks around and finds the door. “Oh. Ok.” With a sideways glance at Sotan, she heads through the door and stops short, because Rex is sitting at the table. He’s got a healthy slice of the juicemelon tart and a tall glass of blue milk in front of him. As soon as he sees her, he sets down his loaded fork and stands up. Shab, he’s tall. She hadn’t realized how tall he was when they were sitting at dinner. He’s got a good six inches on her. Her brain starts planning what moves would work to take him down. Side kick to the knees first. . .

“Good morning,” Rex says evenly. Instead of attacking, which Cara had been unconsciously preparing for, he moves to the cabinets and gets out plates and forks, then he grabs a knife. Cara tenses, but he just starts cutting slices of juicemelon tart and carefully transferring them from the pan to the plates.

He turns around with two plates in his hands. “Here you go,” he says, holding out a plate with a congenial smile. When she doesn’t take it right away, the smile falters a little. “Thought you might be hungry.”

“. . .Ok.” Cara doesn’t take the plate, because that would put her within reach of his long arms. After another awkward minute, he gingerly sets the plates down on the table and takes a step back. “All right, whenever you’re ready then.”

Wow, that smells really good, and Cara _is_ hungry. She’s about to sit down when Sotan comes in, trailed by Mando with the kid, who has been changed into clean clothes with the pants legs rolled up several times, in his arms. The t-shirt hangs down almost to his knees. Mando stops short in the doorway when he sees Rex.

“Good morning,” Rex says, leaning around Cara to greet Mando. Mando doesn’t respond. “Ok, well. . .Um. . .I guess I’ll be in the living room. If you need me.” He takes his plate with him and edges past Mando, who shifts the kid to his other arm and watches him warily.

“All right, have a seat,” Sotan says as she cuts herself a slice of tart. Cara sits and picks up her fork, but Mando is still standing in the doorway.

“Did you ask the Jedi for the coordinates of their base?” Mando asks bluntly.

“They already sent the coordinates, last night,” Sotan says. She tucks a bite of tart into her mouth and chews without looking at them.

“They did? Why didn’t you tell us?” Mando exclaims.

“I’m telling you now.” Another neat bite disappears into her mouth. Mando glares at her. “But you must promise to go.”

Cara takes a bite of tart and it’s like a flavor explosion in her mouth. The melon is tender and sweet and delicious, and wasn’t there something she was supposed to remember about her ship and finding the Jedi. . .? “Oh yeah,” Cara says, mouth still full, “we can’t go. Oh wow, that’s fantastic. I’ve never liked juicemelon much, but this is really delicious.”

“What do you mean you can’t go?” Sotan asks, fork halfway to her mouth.

Oh right. They don’t know yet. Cara chews and swallows a flaky bite of crust. “The Imps know our drive signature. They can track us. So we’ll have to let the Jedi come to us.”

“I’m not doing that,” Mando says quickly. Well shit. Now what?

Sotan makes a humming noise through her nose as she chews, eyes thoughtful. After a few seconds, Rex’s voice floats in from the living room. “You could damp down the electrostatic baffle . . Um. . . not that I’m listening.”

Mando shifts the kid to his hip and turns in the doorway. “You mean run dirty, muddy the signal.”

Cara leans back so she can see past Mando’s shoulder to the living room, where Rex has set aside his datapad and sat forward in his chair, rubbing his hands together. “Well, sure. It won’t work forever, but it’ll get you to the base undetected.”

Mando’s eyebrows furrow in thought. “. . . We’d have to get a different baffle,” he says slowly. “Ours isn’t adjustable.” He shakes his head. “Don’t know where we’d get one though. I didn’t see a junkyard on the map.”

“There’s an adjustable baffle on my ship,” Sotan says matter-of-factly. “You could swap it out.”

“You have a ship?” Cara says. She hadn’t seen one, but it was dark when they got there.

“Well, it doesn’t fly, but last I checked the baffle was still functional. Not a lot of space dust to filter out when you don’t go to space.”

“I can buy it from you,” Mando says. _With what money,_ Cara thinks. She seems to recall that all the credits were hers and he was flat broke.

“The only payment I’m asking is that you take Deeka to the Jedi where he belongs.”

Mando’s jaw sets stubbornly. He sidesteps the implied question and asks one of his own. “Can you show me how to remove it?” Is that a yes? Cara thinks maybe that’s a yes.

“Hmm. . . I think I’m busy eating juicemelon tart,” Sotan says, contemplating another bite on the end of her fork. Cara narrows her eyes at her. The light from the window makes the white marking on her forehead stand out. The pattern looks familiar, but Cara doesn’t know why. Weird.

Mando blinks at her, then looks back at Rex, who is sitting on the edge of his seat, then at Cara, who shrugs. She doesn’t know how to remove an electrostatic baffle either, and besides, she’s eating breakfast too. Mando frowns and chews his lip. After a moment, he turns back to Rex.

“Um. . . Would you—”

“I suppose I could do that,” Rex says, springing to his feet like a kid. “Let’s just go get my tools from the workshop.”

Cara concentrates on the tart as Rex squeezes past Mando, clapping him on the shoulder as he passes. Mando’s responding flinch is subtle. If Cara hadn’t known what to expect, she wouldn’t have even noticed it. “Ready, son—uh—friend?”

Mando doesn’t say anything. His eyes dart back and forth among Cara, Rex (who is looking back at him from the doorway with eyebrows raised), and the kid. Cara returns her attention to her tart because she is not involved in this decision. After a moment, she senses movement out of the corner of her eye, and then the kid is placed in her lap. She looks up to see Mando’s tense back as he follows Rex out the door.

The kid makes grabby hands toward the door as it closes behind Mando. “DA!” he cries. “DADDA!”

“He’ll be back in a minute,” Cara tries to reassure him, but he struggles against her arm and whines. “Here, have a bite of this,” she says, holding out her fork loaded up with a bite of tart. He refuses to take it. Looks like he’s working himself up to a fuss.

“Here, I’ll take him,” Sotan reaches for the kid and Cara lets her take him. She walks him over to the window and points out to the backyard. “Who’s that out there?”

The kid settles, gazing out the window, then turns back to Sotan, eyes wide.

“You’re right, that’s Daddy!”

The kid makes a burbling noise.

“You love Daddy!”

“Ahh! Ahh!”

Sotan turns away from the window and points to Cara. “And who is that?”

The kid gazes at Sotan and doesn’t say anything. Sotan’s eyebrows go up. “Oh!”

“What?” Cara says, suspicious. What could the kid possibly be telling her?

“He’s a little confused.”

The kid glances at Cara, then back at Sotan.

“What did he say?”

“He says your name is. . . Shhh.”

Cara feels her face heating up. Why would he think that? Does she tell him to be quiet too much? “Deeka, it’s Cara. My name is Cara. You know that.”

The kid ducks down and makes a noise like a tire with a slow leak, “Sssshhhh.”

“No, it’s Cara.”

“Ssshhh.”

“I don’t shush him,” she assures Sotan, who is looking at her askance, “I don’t know why he’s calling me that.”

“Ok, I believe you.” She and the kid turn back toward the window, so Cara looks out too. In the back corner of the yard, a cover has been pulled back, revealing a corner of a sleek little ship. Mando and Rex are both knelt down with their heads together, working on removing parts of the hull. “I hope they’re careful with those hull plates. They bend easily.”

Cara’s not sure “careful” is a word she’d apply to Mando’s repair skills, but she doesn’t tell Sotan that. There is a CLUNK from outside as a piece of hull plating hits the ground.

“Hmm. . . maybe we should go supervise. What do you say, Deeka? You can show me what you can do.”

Cara follows Sotan outside and sits on the back steps, while Sotan puts the kid down on the grass. She crouches down next to him and asks, “What should we play, Deeka?”

The kid squeaks and burbles at her.

“UH! BUH BUH BUH!”

“Um. . . I’m not sure about that. How about a stick?”

“UH!”

“Hmm. . .” Sotan looks around at Cara, white eyebrows raised.

Cara knows what he wants—his ball. It’s in the bedroom in Mando’s bag. She’s pretty comfy sitting on the step; she doesn’t want to go in and get it.

“We could try some jumps.”

The kid flaps his arms. “BUH GUH UH!! Muh. BUH!”

Fine. Cara will get the ball. And she will get her datapad while she’s at it. Might as well play a game, since no one wants her around. When she tosses the ball at the kid, he catches it with the Force and flings it at the fence, busting into giggles when it squeaks. Sotan laughs, leaps up and catches the ball, and tosses it back to him.

Cara focuses on her datapad and tries to ignore the tight feeling in her stomach. It’s probably better that the kid doesn’t like her, right? That will make it easier when she finally has to leave. Maybe she should just go now. Slip out the back and take off somewhere they can’t find her. Sotan has a ship, she can take Mando and the kid to the Jedi. They won’t even miss her. Ha, unfortunately the Empire will.

“Wow! Good one, Deeka!” Sotan exclaims. Cara looks up to see the kid leap into the air, almost as high as Sotan’s head to catch the ball. Huh. That’s new. Mando is sitting on the ground, a piece of shiny hull in his lap, but he’s staring at the kid, mouth open. He catches Cara’s eye and grins, and Cara can’t help but grin back, despite the churning in her gut.

Rex, who has half his body inside the hull, mutters, “Shab!”

“What’s going on over there?” Sotan calls.

Rex extricates himself from the hull. He’s got engine grease on his bald head. “I can’t reach this screw. My hands are too big.”

With a sigh, Sotan stands up and brushes the dirt off her hands. “Coming.” As she walks toward the ship, she says back over her shoulder to Cara, “I sent the coordinates to your datapad, by the way.”

Frowning, Cara exits her game and finds a navigation chart waiting in her inbox. Niba is marked in green in one corner, and two systems away, she finds a red dot marking a planet called Nualu. Hyperspace lanes are outlined in blue—looks like about a three day journey.

While she’s examining the chart, she hears a sad little burbling sound from the kid, who has been left alone in the middle of the yard, and then the ball drops in her lap. She looks up to find him standing in front of her, hands raised.

“What’s up, Bubba?”

“BUH.”

“Yeah, that’s your ball,” she says, holding it up.

“MUH,” he says, then makes the tire leaking sound again. “Shhhshshhssh.”

“Yeah, I guess my name is Shh.” She holds the ball out to him, but he ignores it and instead climbs onto her leg. “Oh. Ok,” she says, lifting up the datapad so he can get to her lap. He sits in the circle of her crossed legs and gazes with interest at the screen.

“Want to know where we’re going?”

“UH!”

“Ok, see, we’re going here,” she says, pointing. His little claw follows hers. “We’re going to Nualu. It’ll take three days to get there.”

“DEH DIH BUH BUH GUH.”

“Um. . . yeah, we’re going to see the Jedi.” Suddenly the lonely, left-out feeling in Cara’s stomach morphs into something else—anxiety. What if the Jedi reject them? What if they turn out to be dangerous? These fears aren’t rational, as far as she knows, but who said fears have to be rational?

“It’ll be ok, Bubba,” she says, patting the kid awkwardly on the chest. She doesn’t know why she’s consoling him, since she’s the one who’s nervous. “Daddy will be with you.”

The kid leans his head against her bicep. The little fuzzy hairs on his scalp tickle her skin as he snuggles in. “BUH MUH GUH DADDA,” he says, patting her arm like he’s comforting her too.

Next thing she knows, Mando and Rex are tromping back her direction carrying a metal part between them that is shaped sort of like a waffle, with metal strips all pointing different directions. Sotan flutters around them like a mama convor, reminding them to keep it up off the ground. That’s it, huh? The thing that is going to hide them from the Imps? Cara’s not impressed.

Cara stands up with the kid in her arms. “Ready to go?” she asks. Mando’s forehead scrunches up and his eyes dart toward Sotan, then to Deeka. He inhales noisily and nods. Farking baby porg eyes are back, dammit.

Sotan ends up installing the farking thing on Cara’s ship, because her arm is the only one that fits inside the hole in the hull. Mando hangs back with their bag on his shoulder and the kid perched on his hip. Rex stands just behind his left shoulder.

Sotan’s so far inside the hull of the ship that Cara can’t see what she’s doing. Occasionally she makes a muffled call for a tool, which Cara dutifully places in her outstretched hand.

When Cara hears the kid giggling, she turns around to discover Rex playing peekaboo with him. She’s not sure Mando has noticed at first, but then she realizes he’s playing along, turning his body just enough that the kid has to lean around him to see Rex. Just the barest corner of his mouth is tipped up into a half-suppressed smile.

Finally Sotan extricates herself and steps back. “Ok, it’s in. I damped it down to the lowest setting. It’ll get you to Nualu at least.”

_Then what?_ Cara wonders. Stay there forever? Trade it in? Do the Jedi have junkyards?

Mando deposits the bag and kid in her arms, and he and Rex get to work reattaching hull plates. Cara and the kid supervise, because she wants to make sure that hole gets closed up again good and tight, because no thank you on hull plates getting ripped off as they enter hyperspace.

“Whaddaya think, are they doing a good job, Bubba?” Cara says, trying to see around Rex’s shoulder.

“Buh buh muh dadda!” the kid exclaims.

“I completely agree.”

When they’re done, Rex and Mando both step back and inspect their work in identical poses, arms folded, heads cocked to the side. Cara can’t see what they’re looking at, but they don’t look satisfied

“Think we should—“ Rex starts.

“Yeah,” Mando grunts. Both crouch down and go over the screws again, hitting each one with the screwdriver, then the seams with the welding gun. Finally they stand back again, shoulder to shoulder, and brush off their hands simultaneously.

“Looks good,” Mando says.

“Yep.”

Before they climb the ramp, Rex turns to Mando and sticks out his hand. “Good to meet you, son,” he says. Mando stares at it a beat too long before he sticks his own hand out in response. “My offer still stands,” Rex says, maintaining his grip on Mando’s hand. Mando’s nod is accompanied by a hard swallow. As soon as Rex lets go, Mando ducks his head and turns away toward the ramp.

Sotan gives the kid a kiss on his fuzzy head. “Safe travels, Deeka,” she says. Rex pokes the kid in the belly, which makes him giggle.

“Take care of these two, huh?” Rex says. Cara’s not sure whether he’s talking to her or the kid, so she doesn’t say anything, just smiles weakly and heads up the ramp after Mando. They’re really gonna do this, right? She realizes now Mando never actually promised.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everybody's watched the latest episode, right? I liked it, but I wanted a little more affection between Mando and the kid. Also, I like my name better, so there's that.
> 
> Ahsoka's actions scenes were pretty awesome, however. :-)


	24. Rattle

* * *

Cara’s ship seems a lot more crowded now. She and the kid take up the usual amount of room, but the rest of it is filled to the brim with Mando’s anxiety. He paces, and prowls around cleaning things, and checking on the kid even though he’s fine. Cara doesn’t mind the cleaning part, but why does he keep leaving the bag in the middle of the floor when he’s done repacking it??

The other thing filling up the ship is the n o i s e. The engines are suddenly much louder, like a constant storm blowing through. When she mentions it, Mando shrugs and says, “That’s the baffle.” So there’s nothing that can be done about it. She’s just going to have to put up with three days of this, even though she can feel the pressure building up behind her eyebrows. She hopes sleep will help, but keeps jerking awake thinking something’s wrong.

“It’s going to get louder as the engine picks up more dust,” Mando informs her. So that’s great too.

The kid can’t sleep either. He’s grumpy and fussy, squirming in Mando’s arms pulling at his ears.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Mando says, with an anxious edge to his voice. He bounces the kid against his shoulder. The kid rubs his runny nose on Mando’s shirt. “Do you think he has an ear infection?”

“I think his ears are sensitive to the noise. I mean, look at the size of them.”

Mando pulls the kid back and examines his face, which is scrunched up, mouth open and eyes squeezed shut. “Hmm. Yeah, maybe.” He crouches down, balancing the kid on his arm, and rummages in his bag, which is of course sitting in the middle of the cabin. He comes back up with a pair of socks that look cleanish.

“Here you go, Ad’ika,” he says, carefully stuffing a balled-up sock into each of the kid’s ears. The kid’s eyes open wide and he stops whining. “Is that better?”

After a minute, the whining resumes, although quieter. Mando goes back to bouncing and pacing with the kid on his shoulder. Cara escapes to her bed and puts on headphones. Even when she turns on music, it fails to completely drown out the noise. She’s trying to read her book when she hears another sound overlaying the hum of the engine. What is that? She takes off one headphone and realizes it’s Mando singing to the kid. Well, sort of. He keeps starting, stopping, and starting over. Doesn’t sound like Basic. She opens her compartment partway to listen better. Mando is swaying back and forth, gently patting the kid’s back. Mando’s eyes are closed but the kid’s are halfway open. He has stopped whining and is apparently listening.

After a few more starts and stops, Mando looks up and notices she’s watching. He stops singing and his cheeks turn an adorable shade of pink.

“Was that Mando’a?”

“No, we don’t have any lullabies.” The kid starts squirming again. There is a long pause while he sways and pats his back to calm him again. Cara waits, hoping he’ll explain more. When he finally continues, his voice is so soft that it’s barely audible over the roar of the dirty engines. “My father used to sing it to me.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t remember your first language?”

He shrugs. “I don’t remember much of anything, before the droids blew it all up.”

The kid suddenly sits up in Mando’s arms and gazes around the cabin, eyes wide and mouth open. “AH!” he shouts. “AH DADDA AH AH!”

Mando frowns, looking around too. “What is it?” Cara asks, but Mando shushes her.

“Listen! Do you hear that?”

At first Cara can’t hear anything over the engine hum, but when she focuses, she can pick out a little rattling sound that she doesn’t think was there before. “Where is it coming from?”

Mando turns his head back and forth, trying to locate the source of the sound. After a few seconds, the kid shouts “DAH” and points to the wall near the airlock.

“SHAB!” Mando deposits the kid on the bed next to Cara and runs to the wall. He presses his ear against the inner hull, listening, then swears again, “Dank farrik!”

“What is it? Is it the baffle?”

“No, it’s the artesiatic dampener.”

“The one you fixed?” The sound has gotten louder. It’s obviously metal on metal, and now there is a little shimmy in the drive too. Cara scrambles up the ladder to the cockpit to try to stabilize it, which doesn’t work. She gives up and decides to cut the engines instead. After all the noise, the sudden silence is deafening. But even though they’re drifting, the ship is still shuddering. The metal on metal rattle is the only sound left.

She hears her toolbox opening, then Mando rummaging through the tools. “I need your help,” he calls up.

“What do you need help with? I’m trying to hold it steady.”

There’s no answer. “Mando!” She calls. Tools clatter on the floor. Cara locks the controls as best she can, then slides back down the ladder. Tools are scattered all over the floor. Mando is kneeling next to the hatch unscrewing one of the inner hull plates, while the kid gums a spanner and tries to climb onto his lap.

“Din, what do you need?”

Mando sets aside a hull plate and scoots back, scooping up the kid as he goes. “I can’t get my hand in there. You’ll have to fix it.”

Cara crouches next to the opening, squinting into the dark gap between the inner and outer hulls. The squeaking is louder here, but she can’t see where it’s coming from. “Fix what?”

“The part I was working on. Remember?”

“Not really.” She has a vague recollection of something shiny and metal, but it’s all shiny metal in here.

“It’s the artesiatic dampener,” he says, like that will explain everything. Nope. “Not now, kid,” he grunts. Cara cranes her head around to look at him, and finds him removing Deeka from his neck. The kid grumbles and clings to his collar.

Mando sets the kid firmly on the bed. “You’ll have to reattach the broken piece,” he says, putting the welding torch in Cara’s hand. “I’ll try to hold it steady.”

Well that just sounds impossible. She can’t even see inside the hull, much less be able to get a tool in there and fix anything. She turns on a flashlight and tries to look around, but too many unknown parts are blocking the way. Maybe in the back behind that pole? She sticks her other arm in up to the shoulder, groping around for anything that feels broken. Her shoulder is blocking what little view she had.

As she’s stuck there, she feels Deeka’s little claws climbing up her leggings. “Bubba, get off,” she says, but he keeps climbing up her side and onto her shoulder. She doesn’t have a hand free to pull him off. He starts climbing onto her neck. Dank ferrik! What did that piece look like?

Suddenly she gets a clear picture in her mind—squarish with a round lump in the middle, wires going across the top, broken corner. . . There! She can feel a sharp, jagged edge where the welding gave way. That’s it! So where is the missing piece? She feels along on the bottom of the opening until her fingers come across a small triangular sliver of metal stuck half-way in the top of a fan casing. She can feel the blades of the fan trying to turn, but they are blocked by the loose sliver. That must be it. She can’t quite get ahold of it yet, but at least she knows where it is. Now how is she going to get the welding torch in there to fix it?

While she’s trying to turn on the torch one-handed, the kid climbs down. She hopes he’s not eating any loose screws, but she doesn’t have time to try to figure out where he went because she has to stop the ship from shaking apart. Ha ok, got the torch on, now to thread it in through the opening without burning herself or lighting the wiring on fire. Not to mention she can’t even pick up the missing piece yet, so how exactly is she supposed to reconnect the two? Her searching fingers touch the sliver again but she can’t pull it out.

Suddenly the air pressure changes. She has a sudden fear that she somehow punctured the outer hull, but she can’t feel any oxygen going out. The shimmying and rattling stop, but they’re replaced by a whooshing sound. The air around her starts to sparkle. Her ears are ringing. Dammit, if that hull goes, they’re all dead.

Mando’s voice calls down, “Did you fix it?”

Cara pulls her head out of the opening in the inner hull. “No, I didn’t do anyth—“ She looks down and sees the kid standing in the middle of the cluttered cabin, hand out, eyes closed in concentration. “Um. . . Din?”

He appears at the top of the ladder and glitches out, frozen with his mouth open. The piece of metal under Cara’s fingers is vibrating. Where it had been cold, now it’s getting hot. She yanks her fingers back.

The gravity decreases. Tools and socks and bits of dust start to float off the floor. Hanging onto the hull, Cara’s eyes find Mando’s, which are wide with terror. She’s sure hers look the same. Just as suddenly, the gravity increases again. The torch in her hand doubles in weight. Cara tightens her grip so she doesn’t lose it inside the space between the hulls.

Just as Cara feels the torch slipping from her fingers, the whooshing sound stops, the sparkles fade away, and everything goes completely still. No more rattling, no more hum of the engines, just nothing. The kid wobbles on his feet. Mando scrambles down the ladder, but too slow to catch him before he topples over, eyes closed, sound asleep.

“Hey, buddy,” Mando says, carefully picking him up. The kid doesn’t move. “Hey, you’re ok, you’re ok.” He snuggles the kid in against his shoulder,. “We’re ok,” he whispers into the top of his fuzzy head.

Cara turns off the torch and sets it back in the toolbox. Then she sticks her hand back into the opening and feels for the corner of the artesiatic dampener. It’s no longer jagged and broken. The kid just saved all their damn lives. Again.

In the silence, the computer gives a happy little chirp and intones, “Reboot cycle completed.”

Cara feels a relieved giggle rising, but it sticks in her throat when she glances at Mando. His mouth is still pressed against the kid’s head, but his face is hard and his eyes are _intense_. Before she can say anything, he disappears into his bed compartment with the kid and shuts the hatch firmly behind him.

Huh. They lived through it, so what’s wrong with him?

Cara starts the ship back up, and right away the engines are roaring again. She doesn’t know how she’s going to sleep with all that noise, but she lays back on her bed and tries anyway. Mando still hasn’t emerged from his bed compartment. Cara leaves her hatch partway open in case he wakes up and wants to tell her what the heck is going on with him.

She has just finally fallen asleep when she’s jolted awake again. She lays still in the dark listening until she can finally pick out the new sound over the noise of the baffle. Is that the kid? When she sticks her head out of her hatch to check, she finds Mando sitting up on the edge of his sleeping compartment, shoulders bent and hands over his face. Oh shab, Is he crying? FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT

“Hey,” she says softly.

Mando immediately starts swiping at his face with the palms. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he mumbles into his hands.

“What’s going on? Did you have a nightmare?”

“Yeah.” He sniffles hard and straightens his shoulders. His eyes are red and his cheeks are smeared with tears. “I’m ok,” he says firmly, like he’s trying to convince himself. He’s not convincing Cara.

“Come here,” she says, propping herself up on her elbow and pushing the hair out of her eyes.

Another sniffle, then he pushes himself up off his bed and crosses the cabin. He stands awkwardly in front of her, head bowed and arms tightly folded. He’s chewing the inside of his cheek again. She wonders, not for the first time, if he realizes his anxiety is so obvious on his face.

Cara scoots over on the bed to make room for him and pats the empty space. “Here, sit down.” He sits, stiffly, arms still wrapped around his torso like a hug.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head and drags the heel of his hand across his face again, smearing the tears around. His hands drop into his lap, where his thumbnail picks at the whitish scar around his wrist.

“Do you. . . want a hug?”

There is a longish pause. His eyes flit to her under his lashes, then away again. Finally he swallows hard again and nods jerkily.

Cara sits the rest of the way up and wraps her arms around his stiff shoulders. As soon as she closes the circle, he melts into her embrace, body moulded to hers, with his face pressed against her shoulder and fingers curled in her sleeve. She slides her hand into his hair, working out the tangles and smoothing down the curls. He’s getting heavier, she thinks he about to fall asleep without telling her what’s going on, but eventually he sniffles again and sits up. When she lets go of him, he takes her hand and laces his fingers with hers.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, squeezing his hand.

“. . . I could’ve killed us today.”

Cara shakes her head adamantly. “That wasn’t your fault. Besides, didn’t you say that part was ready to break anyway?”

“Yeah.”

“So it would’ve broken whether you worked on it or not, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So that means it’s not your fault.” No flaw in that logic. He’s gotta feel better now. Cara is brilliant, if she does say so herself. So why doesn’t he look more reassured? Why is he still staring at their hands with his eyebrows furrowed?

“Din? Something else bothering you?”

He chews the inside of his cheek. “. . . Why did you call me Mando?”

“What? No I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. When we were trying to fix the dampener. You called me Mando.”

Cara replays the conversation in her mind. She had been trying to stabilize the ship, and she couldn’t get his attention. . . “Oh, maybe I did. Sorry.”

“Is that—is that how you think of me? Still?”

“I guess so.”

The corner of his mouth pulls back in a grimace. “I just keep replaying that moment when she—when she took off my helmet. Every time I close my eyes I see it again.” He pauses to rub at his face again. “I wish I could—”

“Wish you could what?”

“I wish I could still be Mando. But I can’t, and I don't know how to. . . be the person I have to be now."

_Torn_ , Sotan’s voice whispers in Cara’s ear. Now would be the perfect time to say just the right words to fix everything. Too bad the only thing she can think of to say is, “Oh. That sucks.”

Mando makes a noise that might be a chuckle mixed with a sob. "Yeah, it does.” He chews the inside of his lip, looking down at their joined hands. “I’m sorry for crying so much. I'm trying not to.”

“That doesn’t bother me.”

He doesn’t say anything, but he does sniffle and rub his face again. He’s still chewing the inside of his lip and staring at their hands. She knows how he was raised—Warriors Don’t Cry—and it’s all a bunch of bullshit. One of the many ways his conditioning messed him up. “It doesn’t make me think less of you,” she says, trying to catch his eye. He blinks but doesn’t look up. “If you have emotions, it’s better to deal with them than to stuff them or deny them. You’re not a droid.”

“. . . I know.” He rubs his thumb across the back of her hand. “You don’t tell me to shut up and take it like a man. Thank you. That’s one of the reasons I love you."

Ha ha Cara is _so full of shit_ giving him advice, and now here they are bumping up against one of the many ways she is messed up herself, because she has no idea how to respond to _I love you_. Her heart starts pounding and her mind freezes and her throat closes up. Those words don’t know how to come out of her mouth. After a minute she realizes his thumb has gone still on the back of her hand. He’s giving her the side-eye from under his lashes. _Say something say something_ , but _what_?

Before she can get any words out of her mouth, his lips twist. He pats her hand and says, “I’ll go back to my bed now. Sorry for waking you.”

Cara breaks through the blockade to blurt out, “You can stay. If you want. I mean. If you want to stay here.” She feels like an idiot. Why can’t she say _I love you_? Does she love him? What does it mean to LOVE someone? She likes him, most of the time. When she doesn’t feel like strangling him. Is that enough?

The corner of his lip tips up, just the tiniest bit. “Yeah, I’d like that. Thanks.”

She slides over, and he lays down, carefully, on the edge of the bed. Cara waits for him to come closer, but he doesn’t. The space between them feels a parsec wide, but it’s only a few inches, right? Why is she hesitant to get close? What is she afraid of?

While she’s still trying to puzzle that out, she realizes he has moved, slowly and subtly, until his shoulder is in front of her face. Hmm, that seems like an invitation. She lifts her head up and scoots in a little so she's snuggled in against his shoulder. His scratchy chin moves against her hair, then she feels his lips press against her forehead.

She should probably say something. Maybe “I like you”. She could say she likes him. It’s even true. As she opens her mouth to speak, she realizes his breathing has evened out and his muscles have gone slack. Yeah, he’s asleep again. Shab.


	25. anxiety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting today because I need something good to think about. Stay safe, America.
> 
> Here's me re-reading my chapter to find the quotes y'all liked in the comments: https://twitter.com/djarinculture/status/1345214717959303169?s=20

* * *

Cara wakes to the sound of the kid calling “Dadda. Dadda!” She sleepily reaches out to smack Mando, but before she even touches him, he’s up and out of bed.

“Hey, buddy!”

“Dadda!”

Mando hits the controls to close the compartment behind him, which muffles their voices somewhat, but doesn’t completely block them out. Cara can barely make out what they are saying above the roaring of the engines.

“Did you sleep well?”

“Guh buh dah nuh!”

“Oh really? I’m glad you’re ok.

“Ah wuh Dadda!” *smacking sounds*

“Ow. No, don’t squish daddy’s ears. Love you too, Ad’ika.”

There is the sound of a cupboard opening pots and pans banging around.

“Let’s fix some breakfast, ok kiddo?”

There’s no way Cara’s going to get any more sleep after that, cuz the kid is cooing and babbling, and Mando is shushing him even louder. Then there’s the sound of pots being rattled around, and a pounding noise that keeps going on and on. Cara pushes the door open the rest of the way to find the kid sitting on the table enthusiastically banging a spoon on the bottom of a pan while Mando chops peppers that he probably thinks the kid is going to eat.

“Oh. Good morning,” Mando says, pouring a cup of coffee, “Sorry, did we wake you up?”

Cara’s about to say _Well actually yes you did_ , but then he puts the cup of coffee into her hand, and the kid stands up and holds out his arms to be picked up, babbling “Muh muh guh buh buh.” Well, shit, there’s that wave of love again.

“Nope, I was already awake.” Cara scoops the kid up in her free arm and bounces him. “I’m glad to see you too, Bubba.” She takes a sip of her coffee, and has to work hard not to choke, because it tastes like Mando has dumped about half the bag of sweetener in there.

“Does it taste all right?” Mando asks. His tone is light, but he’s chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Yep, it’s great thanks.” She quickly takes another sip to reassure him, and he nods and goes back to rummaging around in the cooler. The kid holds out his hands for the cup.

“You want some of this, bubba?”

He burbles and makes grabby hands, so Cara shrugs and holds the cup up for him to try it. As soon as he gets some in his mouth, he pulls back with a grimace. The coffee dribbles back out again. Cara’s can’t help but grin at the look of betrayal in his huge dark eyes. Dank farrik, it’s not fair how adorable he is.

She hears a snort, and looks up to see Mando watching them with a twinkle in his eyes, lips twitching in barely suppressed laughter. He’s pretty adorable too, she has to admit. A grin is definitely a good look on him.

A chime comes from the cabin—time for hyperspace—and Mando’s grin immediately drops.

“All right, ready to go?” Cara asks.

“What about breakfast?” Mando says, looking around at the mess.

“I’m good with coffee. I can’t do hyperspace on a full stomach.”

Mando chews his lip reluctantly. “Ok, just a minute while I put this stuff away.”

Cara stows her coffee, grabs the two bags of berries she bought on Niba and hustles up to the cockpit with the kid on her hip. He’s making grabby hands for the berries, so she sits him in the navigation seat and hands him one of the bags as she slides into the pilot’s seat. From the cabin she hears the pantry cupboard being opened and closed, then a bunch of banging around down like pans being put away, then nothing. After a minute, Cara gets tired of waiting for him so she reaches over to the nav panel and pulls up the hyperspace route. Seventeen minutes in hyperspace, their longest jump yet. Cara’s very glad she didn’t eat breakfast because there’s definitely no way it would’ve stayed down. She can feel her palms starting to get sweaty already. Let’s get this over with before her stomach rebels.

“Coming?” she calls down to Mando. The kid is standing on the navigator’s seat peering at the map on the display while he stuffs berries into his gaping maw.

Instead of answering, Mando climbs the ladder slowly. He picks up the kid and slides into his seat but doesn’t look at the route she has programmed.

“Ok, we’re ready to go.”

“. . . Ok.”

“Seventeen minutes. I hope I don’t barf.”

Mando makes a noise that might be a chuckle. “I guess I hope you don’t barf too. That would be hard to clean off the controls.”

“Right, yes it is. . . I don’t know that from experience or anything.”

That was intended as a joke, but Mando doesn’t laugh. When she glances at him, she finds him hunkered over the nav panel with the kid, pointing out the route they are taking while Deeka watches with wide, curious eyes.

“See, right here, Ad’ika, that’s where we’re going.”

“Deh dih?”

“We have to check if it’s safe before we contact the Jedi,” Mando says seriously. “Do you understand?”

“Guh buh dah meh gah,” the kid babbles back.

“That’s good,” Mando says. The kid stands up on Mando’s lap and shoves a berry into Mando’s mouth. “Thank you, Ad’ika,” Mando says just as seriously, patting the kid on the back, “Now sit down; it’s time for hyperspace,” he continues, like it’s the kid who’s the holdup and not the fact that Mando decided to do all the dishes and doesn’t even have his seatbelt buckled yet.

“You ready?” Cara says.

Mando finally pulls on his seatbelt and nods, so Cara engages the engines and slips them into hyperspace. Well, “slip” probably isn’t the right word. The engines are screaming like she pulled their hair. It’s disconcerting, but when she cuts her eyes to Mando, he and the kid are just scarfing down berries and ignoring the noise, so Cara decides to do the same.

Seventeen minutes in hyperspace is plenty of time for Mando and the kid to polish off their berries and start casting hungry glances at the bag in Cara’s hand. Cara clutches the bag to her chest. Nope, not sharing. That kid is a bottomless pit.

By the time they emerge on the other end, the kid has fallen asleep on mando’s lap. Mando takes him down to the cabin, and Cara follows him down.

Mando tucks the kid into bed, then starts wiping down the already clean counter in the bathroom, so his anxiety has obviously kicked into high gear again. Only six more hours of this. Cara wishes she had something for him to fix. It worked pretty well to ask him to fix her armor. Maybe she could surreptitiously break a piece of the ship, something non-essential, and ask him to repair it? The sink in the bathroom doesn’t get very good water pressure. . .

While he works, Cara grabs her coffee and a couple of protein bars and plops down on the bed. “Want one?” she says, holding up a honey flavored protein bar. He shakes his head.

“Not hungry.” He tosses the cleaning cloth on the floor, crouches down and starts digging in his duffle bag, pulling clothes out and piling them on the floor too.

“What are you looking for?”

“I’m going to do laundry.”

He’s. . . going to do laundry? Well, that would be a first. Maybe she can use this anxiety to her advantage. Maybe he’ll do some ironing next. Mando keeps rummaging in the bag, pulling out clothes that aren’t even dirty, frowning at them, and adding them to the pile. If he’s determined to launder everything, he won’t have time to do any ironing. Cara goes back to eating. She hopes he’ll at least pick up the mess when he’s done.

“What’s this?” he says. She looks up to find him holding up the baby porg stuffy she bought on Niba.

“It’s you,” she says without thinking.

His eyebrows pull down. He turns the stuffy around and cocks his head at it. “Huh?”

“It’s a porg.”

“Yeah, I know that. What do you mean it’s me?”

“It looks like you.”

Mando frowns at the stuffy again, examining its face. He seems completely unaware that his eyes are perfect mirrors of the porg’s. “No it doesn’t.”

With a sigh, Cara sets aside her empty wrappers and stands up. “Come here,” she says, gesturing toward the bathroom.

“I don’t want to look at myself,” he says, scowling.

“Come on.” She takes the porg out of his hand and drags him in front of the mirror. “See?” she says, holding up the stuffy, “Baby porg. That’s what your eyes look like when you’re upset.”

His baby porg eyes look back and forth between his face and the porg. He’s trying to scowl, but his eyebrows slant down at the outside, not inside, making him look more anxious and sad than angry. “I’m not upset.”

“Sad?”

He shakes his head. Liar.

“Anxious.”

His jaw works from chewing the inside of his cheek. “I don’t have anxiety,” he lies. Cara feels a pang of sympathy for him, but not enough to drop it, because OBVIOUSLY HE HAS ANXIETY.

“I’m going to touch you,” she warns him. He nods, so she sets the stuffy on the counter, slides her arms around his waist, and presses her fist against his belly. “Do you feel like you swallowed a bunch of bees and they’re trying to fight their way out?”

He puts his hands over hers. He doesn’t say anything, but she can hear his breathing pick up speed. Cara catches his hand and traces his fingers. “Can you feel your heart pounding all the way to your fingertips?”

“. . . Sometimes.”

“And you feel like everything’s going wrong all the time and you can’t fix it.”

His eyes jerk up to meet hers in the mirror. “Yeah, that’s—that’s pretty much exactly how I feel.”

“That’s anxiety, and you have it, buddy.”

Mando stares at his face in the mirror, then looks over his shoulder at Cara’s face. “What about you? Don’t you get anxious?”

“Sure, sometimes,” Cara says.

“So why doesn’t your face look like this?” he says.

“Um. . . I guess i’ve learned to control it a little, over the years. Most people do.”

“Oh. I never had to think about that. Great. Something new to worry about.” He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again; lowers and raises his eyebrows, but they just settle back into the same expression. “Is that better?”

“. . . Not really. It might help to deal with the reason for the anxiety. What do you think is causing it?”

Mando shrugs. He frowns and wiggles his eyebrows again, but only succeeds in looking constipated. It’s kind of adorable. Cara wants to kiss that little pucker between his eyebrows. “How about you? what makes you anxious?”

That was an obvious dodge, but now Cara’s got to come up with a response that won’t push him away, which is not easy tightrope to cross. “Um. . . I guess. . .” — _you leaving, you not leaving, being alone, not being alone, not getting to make my own decisions, making the WRONG decisions, hurting you by messing up this relationship like I do all relationships, hurting you by NOT leaving when I should—_ “making a mistake. Lots of things,” she hedges. She feels a little guilty for not exactly answering his question, but he didn’t answer hers either. “But I usually feel better if I just wait a while. How about you? What makes you feel better?” she asks.

His face turns thoughtful. “I think. . .Um. . .sex.”

Cara feels her lips tug back in an involuntary grin. “Sex makes you feel better?”

He nods. “Yes,” he says in a serious voice, but there’s a mischievous little twinkle in his eye. Cara’s grin widens.

“Well then, by all means, let’s have sex.”

His eyes meet hers in the mirror again, and oooh, there’s that shy half-smile she loves so much. “Right now?” he says.

“Do you want to?”

“Always,” he breathes.

* * *

Yada yada yada

* * *

She settles back on the bed with her hands behind her head and admires the muscles in Mando’s bare back. Trapezius, rhomboid, latissimus, lean and smooth. His skin has darkened a bit from exposure to the sun, and a few freckles have popped out along the top of his shoulder. Cara wants to kiss them.

He turns his head enough to see that she’s watching him. His cheeks turn pink, and then she gets a glimpse of that shy smile again before he turns his face away.

“What?” she says, smirking.

His eyes cut to her from under his lashes. She can just see the corner of his mouth pulled up into a wry half-smile. “Snuggling makes me feel better too.”

“Well then I guess we’d better snuggle.” She holds out her arm. Grinning, he curls against her, with his head tucked into her shoulder and his leg thrown over hers.

While she’s considering how to start the conversation about his anxiety again, he says, “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me.”

Well, that was easy. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. The answer is green.”

“Huh?”

“You asked me what my favorite color was. It’s green.”

“Oh. Oookay. Why green?”

“I like the woods, plants, things like that.”

Cara laughs. “Well then, it’s lucky Deeka is green.”

“He’s one of the reasons I like green.” He catches her arm and brushes his thumb over the Fulcrum tattoo on the inside of her wrist. “What’s this?” he says, tracing one of the lines with his finger. Ooo, that’s very distracting.

“That’s Fulcrum. It’s a Rebel thing.”

“Looks like Sotan’s forehead.”

Cara cocks her head and squints at the jagged white lines and dots. “Huh. Yeah, I guess it does. Weird.”

Mando reaches up and puts her hand on his head. Cara obliges by sliding her fingers into his hair.

“What about my other question?”

“What other question?” he dodges. _You know what question I’m talking about, buddy_.

“The question of what you’re anxious about.”

He doesn’t answer. Oh, no, you’re not going to just go to sleep and not talk about this. “Din?” she says, patting his head. He makes a noise through his nose but doesn’t say anything. “It might help to talk about it.”

There is a long pause. She would think he was asleep, but his breathing is harsh and uneven, so she waits.

“What if. . . what if it’s a trick and they hurt him?” he says finally.

“Well then we’ll super kill ‘em, won’t we?”

That doesn’t get the laugh she had been hoping for. “Yeah,” he says seriously. There is a long pause where he silently traces his fingers around her navel. That’s also very distracting. Maybe these questions aren’t that important after all. Maybe she just wants to lie here all day and let him stroke her stomach. Yeah, that sounds good.

She has almost forgotten the question when he says in a quiet, ragged voice, “What if they take him away from me?”

_Isn’t that kind of the idea,_ she thinks, but she doesn’t say that. “Umm. . . you’re his guardian, right? He’s part of your clan. So I guess you’ll get to decide what happens to him. He knows you as his daddy.”

“Yeah, I’m his buir. . . his daddy, but they have a claim to him that pre-dates me. I don’t have anything official that makes him mine.”

“Except the fact that he wants to be with you.” Ha where does that leave Cara? The two of them have this unbreakable bond, and the kid thinks her name is _Shhh_.

“Yeah. I don’t know. The more I think about things, the more messed up everything gets in my head. I’m lucky I’ve got you around to keep me from falling apart.” The part of his cheek that she can see curves up into a rueful grin. “Yet another reason I love you.”

Her hand goes still on his head. There’s that lump in her throat again. She _can’t say it_. More than that, she can’t even explain to him WHY she can’t say it.

He lifts his head enough to make brief eye contact, then settles back in her shoulder and resumes stroking her stomach. She can feel him chewing the inside of his cheek based on the movement of his jaw against her shoulder. “Thanks for putting up with me,” he whispers.

She doesn’t know what to say to that either. It’s not just her putting up with him. It’s a mutual “putting up with”. She knows she can be prickly; she knows her defenses are hard to get through. She knows she doesn’t know how to tell—or even _show_ — people she loves them.

“Sorry I can’t. . . I don’t even know what to say.”

“Sorry if I’m . . . pushing you too much. I don’t mean to. This is all new for me.”

“It’s ok. I keep telling you to show your emotions, but I don’t know how to do that either. So, I’m sorry you have to put up with me too.”

Mando lets out a huff of a chuckle. “It’s a burden, but I think I’ll keep you around. Since it is your ship and all.” He trails his warm fingers over her stomach. Oh, that feels nice. Her barriers are crumbling—maybe she could say it, even though everything in her history is telling her loving someone is dangerous, that it gives them too much power over you. He’s trying to overcome his conditioning; why can’t she do the same? While she’s trying to formulate the words, his hand goes still and heavy on her waist, and his breathing evens out. Asleep again.

Cara cranes her neck so she can look down into his face. His jaw is dark with stubble. She can see his pulse thumping slowly and evenly at his throat. She kind of wants to kiss that pulse point. There’s that rush of emotion again—is that love? Could be, it’s not like anything she’s ever felt before. She could say it now, while he’s asleep. He won’t hear her, but she will know if she can overcome the mental block.

“I love you,” she whispers, like if she says it without voice, it won’t mean the same. He huffs in his sleep and turns a little to wrap his arm more securely around her waist. Well, now her nose is mashed up against his forehead. Good thing he smells nice. He smells like home. She’ll take it, at least for now.

* * *

Cara wakes to the sound of Mando’s voice, muffled and indistinct. He’s definitely not in the bed anymore. The hatch to her bed compartment is open a little. Sounds like he’s not in the cabin either.

“I thought . . . what you said about. . .”

She thinks he must be talking to the kid, but then she hears a second voice, also male.

“Did you . . .”

The second voice is lower pitch than Mando’s, not as hoarse. Is he talking to Rex? The voice sounds like him.

Mando again: “I tried but I don’t think I did a good job of it. I’m not sure. . . got the . . .”

“. . . keep trying. . . get the . . .”

“I’m not good at . . .”

“Don’t. . . you’ll get better with practice.”

“I know, that’s what you said. I’ll keep trying.”

“Good to hear, son.” Yeah, that’s definitely Rex. Cara wonders what Mando is promising to do, but at that moment the kid makes a little cooing noise, and suddenly Mando comes sliding down the ladder to the cabin.

“Hey, buddy! Should we try again to make breakfast?”

“Muh muh muh muh muh!” the kid babbles.

“Shhh! She’s sleeping.”

The kid makes the sound like a tire leaking again. Ok, time to get up, before the kid forgets she even exists.

Cara pushes open the door to her compartment and finds the kid perched on Mando’s shoulder, clutching the baby porg stuffy in one hand and clinging to Mando’s hair with the other, while Mando scoops crispy bacon out of the pan. “AH!” the kid squeals. Mando holds up a piece of bacon and drops it into the kid’s mouth like a baby bird.

“Hi guys,” Cara says brightly. The kid lurches on Mando’s shoulder and grabs hold of Mando’s ear to keep from falling. Mando’s ear turns red and his face scrunches up.

“Ow, that hurts,” he says, peeling the kid’s fingers off his ear. “Here, go see Cara, buddy.”

The kid holds his arms out toward Cara, who scoops him up and sits at the table with him on her lap. He wraps his skinny arms around her neck and smushes his greasy face against her cheek. Was that intended to be a kiss?

“Buh guh muh muh muh muh!” he cries, patting her cheek. “Shhh!”

“It’s Cara, bubba. My name is Cara.” Maybe the kid has decided that’s her name because Mando keeps telling him not to wake her up?

“Shh!”

Cara glances at Mando, who is concentrating on taking something out of the cooler. “Say ‘Ca-ra.”

“Muh muh muh shhhh!” He stuffs the porg’s foot into his mouth and chews on it with determination.

Cara’s about to try again, when Mando sets a plate down in front of her and the thought flies out of her mind. “Ooh, is that the rest of the juicemelon tart?! Where did you get it?”

“I asked Rex for it.”

Cara’s plate contains a healthy slice of tart, along with several strips of bacon and half an aurilian fruit. Mando’s plate on the other hand, only contains bacon and a protein bar.

“Where’s yours?”

“I got it for you,” Mando says.

“Oh. Well, thank you.”

The kid’s little hand sneaks up, snatches a slice of bacon and disappears back under the table. He can eat all the bacon he wants, as long as he leaves that tart alone. Cara carves off a generous chunk of tart and impales it with her fork. She’s chewing the first delicious bite when the computer chimes.

Mando freezes, with a slice of bacon halfway to his mouth. The baby porg eyes go into overdrive, then, as Cara watches, his jaw relaxes, his forehead smoothes out and his eyebrows straighten. He’s been practicing in front of the mirror, hasn’t he? Learning how to turn his face into a mask. Something most people learn before they reach adulthood, but he spent his adolescence in an actual mask, and now he’s playing catch up. That’s probably a good thing, right? He’s learning. So why does she feel like she’s losing something important?


End file.
